


Tolerance

by darkwood



Series: You. Impossible you. [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Drug Dealer, Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, London, M/M, Mentions of Substance Abuse, Minor Original Character(s), Substance Abuse, Werewolf Mates, Werewolf Mycroft, Werewolf Sherlock, Werewolves, abuse of tea kettles, burgeoning issues, john's temper, mobile chargers, sherlock's filing system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-03 09:19:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 40,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6605332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkwood/pseuds/darkwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The return to Montague street from Wiltshire that moon was rose-tinted and unrealistically light-hearted. </p><p>There was fallout, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The return to Montague street from Wiltshire that moon was rose-tinted and unrealistically light-hearted. Sunday evening, after Horatio and Anne had taken Connie home, Sherlock had explained that Connie’s curiosity was unusual for a wolf her age. Elisabeth, who had joined them again at that point, had added that it was best to discourage the young from **brash** attachments. John wasn’t entirely sure that he understood what was meant by that, but he thought it probably had something to do with young love. Another weekend in the country and John could proudly say that while _the pair_ of them weren’t any better at the whole issue of Sherlock’s constant-

 

“Projective transference? Is that the word to use?”

 

“No, John, redundant.” Sherlock sniffed, tucking his attention back into the screen of his mobile.

 

Well. It had to be considered more than normal transference, though. John was certain of it. Not that he had not been sharing openly before, but since it had come out in the open, Sherlock seemed to project his emotions at John like a lighthouse shining a beam into the fog. They came through bright and clear, sometimes even when Sherlock wasn’t projecting them.

 

Of course, following that analogy, John was the fog. It might be considered a failure of John to _produce_ the appropriate resistance…

 

That thought sounded particularly uncharitable, and John squashed it viciously.

 

Sherlock seemed to have absolutely no ability to shield his feelings, though John wasn’t sure he was really trying.

 

To be honest, John didn’t know if he wanted him to.

 

Even if they hadn’t worked out their specific and particular _dynamic_ , as Elisabeth had indicated they would need to, at least John could tell his feelings from Sherlock’s, and in an extreme sort of a way, he could dampen them.

 

There was fallout, of course.

 

Sherlock grew agitated when he was pushed away, and once he was let back in… Well. The entire train ride Sherlock had spent pressed against John’s side and staring out the windows. Any time someone in the car moved past them or an attendant stopped to check in on them, Sherlock rose up to his full seated height and glared.

 

It kept them their privacy, at least.

 

John soothed his mate with a careful application of hand-holding, keeping their fingers threaded together and, once, when the offending bystander didn’t back away quickly enough for the wolf’s tastes, John simply leaned over and bit Sherlock’s ear.

 

He couldn’t tell which was funnier, the swift change in Sherlock’s focus or the absolutely scandalized look Sherlock gave him.

 

All John offered in reply was, “It worked.”

 

Sherlock snorted, but after that he settled down for the rest of the trip. They made it to the city and once in London, John convinced Sherlock into takeaway. They were tucked away in the flat with it before nine.

 

The flat was no larger than the last time they’d been there. It wasn’t a shoe box, certainly, but it wasn’t very much larger. John couldn’t really complain, he had been in smaller and lived with less space, so it wouldn’t have been a problem if there wasn’t a considerable amount of detritus. Sherlock huffed and grumbled defensively about his filing system whenever John tried to bring it up, and John was too pleased to be in some relative form of ‘home’ that involved just the two of them than to complain that night. They ate, they watched some crap telly that ended up with Sherlock snorting derisively every time one particular character spoke. When John politely asked Sherlock not to drown out the sound quite so entirely, Sherlock stomped off to the bedroom. John was growing used to some of Sherlock’s oddities, and watched the remainder of the show himself.

 

At precisely nine-forty-two he was interrupted by banging on the door.

 

“Don’t bother,” Sherlock huffed from the bedroom as John rose to answer it.

 

That didn’t stop John from going to the door, even though he knew it had to be someone for Sherlock. No one knew this was John’s address.

 

There was a man on the other side of the door. An average looking man, or at least John thought he was, in a somewhat expensive shirt. He was on the far side of twenty, probably somewhere just shy of thirty, with thinning hair and a rather unfortunate mustache. He looked as though he had been on the wrong end of a fight. There was blood coming from a most likely broken nose, and gashes on one side of his face that disappeared up into his receding hairline. He didn’t seem to see John opening the door, he staggered quickly past him into the flat.

 

“Sherlock!” the man gasped, “I bloody know you’re home, you prick! You have to help me!”

 

Rather than keep the door open so the entire building could hear the shouting, John shut the door behind the man. It was then that John noticed the man was bleeding from more than just his nose.

 

Sherlock stepped into the bedroom doorway, glowering dramatically. “Well, Milton?”

 

John withheld his surprise at Sherlock’s familiarity with the bleeding man, instead moving to stop the bleeding man’s progress into the flat. Sherlock didn’t seem unsettled or in any way upset by it, which was strange given how blatantly territorial his mate could be. But it had to be a real state of disregard, didn’t it? John couldn’t _feel_ anything amiss with him. He wondered if Sherlock had learned to rein it in.

 

“What do you mean, ‘Well, Milton’?” the man parroted back at Sherlock. The man - Milton - shrugged off John’s gentle attempt to get him to sit on the couch.

 

From the corner of his eye, John saw his mate still and felt the first tinge of agitation from him. No, Sherlock was no better at containing his feelings than before. He simply hadn’t cared until he’d been annoyed.

 

“You disappeared for six months, and you _owed me money,”_ Milton grumbled. “All of this is your fault!”

 

“Coming to my flat late at night certainly means you believe it to be,” Sherlock said, eyes narrowed.

 

“That’s all well and good,” John interrupted the pair of them, “but you can’t go around bleeding on the whole blasted flat! Sit down and let me take a look at you.”

 

Milton turned suspicious eyes on John, as though this was the first he was seeing of him. From the look of him he had to be on something.

 

“Who are you?” Milton demanded, jabbing a finger roughly in John’s direction and swaying on his feet.

 

“A doctor. And I should bloody well be asking you that question,” John snapped. He pointed at the couch, which he had long ago decided needed to be swapped out for something newer or at least cleaner, anyway, and demanded, “SIT.”

 

Whether it was the tone of voice John had used or the low growl from Sherlock that punctuated it, John couldn’t tell. The growl had started right after his barked command, and Milton stumbled his way onto the couch obediently.

 

Sherlock seemed to take offense to Milton sitting on the couch. He stared down the intruder, almost to the point of ignoring when John asked, “Medicine kit?”

 

After a full two minutes of glaring while Milton bled on their sofa, Sherlock muttered, “Kitchen, left cabinet.”

 

“You gone bloody domestic, Sherlock?” Milton demanded.

 

Sherlock finally left his leaning pose in the doorframe to stalk over to the couch where Milton was seated. There was vicious intent in his eyes as he went.

 

John did his best not to bristle as he headed into the kitchen to retrieve was needed. Behind him he could hear Sherlock’s voice, low and dangerous as he delivered a few choice words to Milton, words that started out with, “Whatever possessed you to—” John didn’t bother listening for the rest. Instead he chose to tackle the task of locating the first aide kit that Sherlock had said was in the cabinet somewhere.

 

It would have been easier if the cabinet was in any way organized and not crammed full of more detritus of a similar sort to what had possession of the living room and every surface of the flat except the bed (and to be honest that had only gotten cleared off after they had arrived for very obvious recreational reasons).

 

By the time John found the kit, the voices had gone silent in the living room.

 

John returned to it to find Sherlock with his upper lip curled in a sneer, face tilted away from Milton as though he smelled offensive in some way. Milton was slumped on the couch, head tipped to one side.

 

“Shock,” Sherlock said. “Blood loss and an unknown dose of what was undoubtedly a powerful hallucinogenic cocktail of some sort. The wounds he has aren’t deep, you needn’t bother.”

 

John went over to the couch anyway, and went about the mundane process of cleaning the gashes on Milton’s face. “Still a doctor,” he reminded Sherlock. There was nothing to be done about the broken nose, the man would have to deal with that himself. Really, they ought to get him to an A&E. Whatever drugs the man had been given…

 

“And who is he?”

 

“He was one of my dealers,” Sherlock said. He had Milton’s hand lifted and was inspecting his wrist. He mentioned it absently, off-handed as though it were of little importance.

 

John didn’t agree with that assessment.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“There is nothing wrong with your hearing,” Sherlock replied. “Which means that either you are unwilling to believe the truthful words I have related to you, or you find the practice of drug usage abhorrent. The latter, obviously, partly because of your chosen profession and more, unless I am wrong, which I very rarely am, to do with having a substance abusing trainwreck of a sister.”

 

John slowed his cleaning, afraid he might punch the man who was already unconscious for things he had not been witness to but nonetheless got his blood boiling. “What, precisely, did he deal you?”

 

“Cocaine,” Sherlock said, finally looking up at John. “To which I have no biochemical addiction that you need fear. I never shared needles, so if you can allay that worry before it grows root in your fertile imagination, we will save ourselves another needless argument.”

 

They stared at one another, silently. Sherlock had what John was starting to think of as his immovable expression on. The trouble with it was that Sherlock did not seem to grasp how stubborn John could be right back. “How in the seven hells can someone so observant miss something so painfully _obvious?”_  


 

“A great many things are possible, John, but they do not all come to pass.”

 

“That’s not what I asked, Sherlock,” John replied.

 

“Your question made no sense, so I have chosen to answer a better one.”

 

“A better one that I _didn’t ask,”_ John said, taking his hands off dressing Milton’s wounds before he managed to injure the drug addict worse than he already was.

 

John could feel Sherlock’s eyes following him as he paced in a loop the four steps to the far side of the kitchen and back. He could feel Sherlock’s concern warring with his own agitation on the subject, but rather than let it seep into him, John pushed it away. He had figured that much out just yesterday, and he thanked whatever lucky star had gotten him this far for the aptitude with it. He focused, instead, on Milton-the-dealer, checking to make sure that there wasn’t a more serious injury. Because-

 

“There’s too much blood,” John said aloud.

 

Sherlock made a contemplative noise. “For the wounds he has, it stands to reason that it’s not all his.”

 

“He came barging in here bellowing that you had to help him,” John said, frowning.

 

“I told you not to open the door,” Sherlock said, rising and crossing to the window. He let out a growl. “And, it seems, I was right.”

 

“What do you mean?” John asked, getting up and crossing to join him at the window.

 

The flat was on an upper floor, so the light from the street came at a very steep angle. John couldn’t see the flashing lights of the police vehicles until he got right up next to Sherlock in the window.

 

“Well, shit.”

 

 

*


	2. Chapter 2

It was already ten o’clock when he finished the stack of paperwork on his desk. He was just putting a call in to Abigail to let her know he would be heading home, had just said hello when his mobile beeped softly with an incoming call. A part of him really wanted to ignore it. He’d been on since seven that morning, and all he wanted was a warm meal and a warm wife and a warm bed in some order.

 

It was dispatch, though.

 

“Sorry, Abbey,” he said, wincing at her sigh, “I wouldn’t, but it’s dispatch.”

 

“It’s always dispatch,” Abbey retorted, “I’d worry you were cheating on me if I didn’t have it on good authority that you are, quite literally, _always clocked in.”_  


 

He winced further at that.

 

“You do have to come home at some point, you realize? This is a marriage, it’s not a flatshare.”

 

The line beeped again.

 

“This weekend,” he replied.

 

“Sure.”

 

“I’ll find the time. You and me.”

 

There was silence for a moment, punctuated by another beep of the call-waiting.

 

“Saturday,” she said finally.

 

“Absolutely.” He let her smile for a moment, knew she was smiling, and then said, “Now, love, I-”

 

“Go on then.”

 

Breathing a sigh of relief, he switched lines over to dispatch.

 

“I guess now you’re a sergeant, you can keep me hanging when I’m doing you a favor.”

 

“Not you, Dotty, sorry, love, it was the wife.”

 

“Ooh. At this hour, on the phone? I doubt that’s a conversation that’s over.”

 

“Not in the slightest,” he replied with an inward wince. He’d have to trade off shifts with… Dimmock, probably, if he could manage it. “What’s on then?”

 

“You asked for a head’s up when it was that posh fellow what you busted on the cocaine two years ago,” Dotty said.

 

“I… did,” he replied.

 

Some days his compassion was worn thin, and this was one of them. He’d only made sergeant a month ago, he had anticipated some longer nights, some better pay, and a different set of problems from before. He certainly hadn’t expected to get called on an old failing of his bleeding heart.

 

“Well there’s a spot of trouble over on Montague Street with his name on it. Not in your usual haunts, of course, but you did ask.”

 

He withheld a groan. He certainly hadn’t anticipated dealing with _Sherlock Holmes_ tonight. “Who’s the on-call for it?”

 

“Constable Trimble got called in by the CSO that took the initial,” Dotty said. “Told him you asked for a courtesy on it, and he said that if you made it before the tosser got himself into handcuffs, you were welcome to talk to him.”

 

“I better hurry then.” That got a laugh out of both of them. “Dorothy Hawkins, you’re one in a million.”

 

“One in a million and two, sergeant, now get going.”

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the part where I meant please, please correct me if I've got my NSY ranks wrong. (Otherwise, you can probably guess who it is without me updating the tags yet, can't you?)


	3. Chapter 3

The number of people in and out of the flat was unacceptable, but the rational part of Sherlock’s mind knew it was far safer to abide their presence than it was to throw them all out. Throwing them out would require a call to Mycroft to sort out the mess, and beyond the annoyance of it, Sherlock refused to turn for help. He and John could manage just fine on their own.

 

So he stood in the corner by the window and watched the humans argue with John.

 

In a perverse sort of way, it was interesting.

 

Well, except for the heavy feeling that was radiating out of John about the entire mess.

 

That feeling was hard for Sherlock to decipher, but he knew it would cause problems in the near future.

 

What was worse, he had no idea how to avert what he sensed was coming.

 

The _interruption_ of all this had taken Sherlock unforgivably by surprise. It was almost excusable, given the startling feeling that afternoon of an irritated John going… well. The only way to explain it was that John had gone almost _absent_ from him. It was distressing, this withdrawal of John’s feelings. To make a pedestrian sort of analogy, it was as if John’s sharing of feelings was like a faucet. John tended to keep the faucet more closed, but since this mess had started, he had all but shut off. Sherlock could feel him. Sherlock _knew_ John was there, but it was like standing by a water pipe on a hot day. The cool temperature meant that there was water on the other side of the metal, but he could die of thirst before he got through to it.

 

Sherlock _hated_ that sort of description for things. It was so imprecise that it set his teeth on edge.

 

This was why he’d eschewed the entire process of mating, _this_ was the reason he’d struggled against Mummy’s good intentions and Mycroft’s casual introductions and-

 

His thoughts were interrupted by John stepping close to him.

 

Sherlock turned, soothed by the proximity of his mate, but puzzled by it because his mood was still the heavy one that had descended the moment Milton collapsed.

 

One of the police officers stepped into the doorway, mobile belching out harsh static, and both John and Sherlock shifted to face it.

 

“John?”

 

In response, a cup of tea was held up for him.

 

Sherlock took it. As he wrapped his fingers around the mug, they brushed John’s, and for the briefest of moments the activity of the room was gone and all there was in the whole room was John’s blue eyes and the warmth in their hands.

 

The moment passed.

 

John turned and headed back over to the couch, hovering for a moment as he checked Milton’s pulse before heading back into the kitchen.

 

Sherlock watched him go, and knew without a doubt that John was worth all of this trouble. Every single bit of it was worth less than John was, and even despite their argument, John was still with him. John was still thinking about him.

 

No sense reflecting on what he had thought before he was mated, then. Sherlock sipped his tea, leaning against the wall beside the window and looking out onto Montague street below.

 

Of course, intellectually, Sherlock had known that at some point he would have to convey to John his past, and he had known also that there were aspects of his past that John would undoubtedly find objectionable.

 

Sherlock _had_ thought he would have more time to devise a way to tell his mate.

 

Whatever manner he would have come up with would have been far less abrupt and-

 

No, that was untrue. Sherlock knew himself capable of many things - many more things where John was concerned - but platitudes and the like were something he was unlikely to come up with when concocting a plan.  
   
John was, overall, taking the news in a manner that seemed…

 

Sherlock frowned at the window as the PCO that had come knocking on the door gave up on John and began trying to question the semi-conscious Milton about medical attention. It was as futile an action as most of what the PCO had done since arriving, but someone might give the woman points for trying. Someone _other_ than Sherlock, that is.

 

Keeping half an eye on the little interrogation, Sherlock turned his thoughts back to the situation of John. There had to be a… more agreeable way to consider the situation. He just had to puzzle it out.

 

Unlike Sherlock, John was far more reserved with ‘sharing’, as his mother had put it when he had asked privately, his emotions. _There, that was certainly better than any fanciful metaphors, wasn’t it? It was not a terminal situation._ He received them readily - _most of the time,_ his active mind corrected him. And it was not that John was without emotion to share. The opposite was true, when he opened himself to it, John had the most vibrant of feelings.

 

Sherlock found his mate’s image in the window. He had stepped back into the kitchen, and Sherlock was amused to hear him ask the PCO, “Tea?”

 

“No thank you, Mister Watson,” the PCO replied.

 

“It’s unlikely to be spiked,” Sherlock quipped at her. “John wouldn’t compromise your position.”

 

The woman eyed him in the glass, and Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Mister Holmes, I’ll have to advise you, again, that the pair of you are not without suspicion in this instance. What’s happened to Mister Milton will be under investigation, and any attempts at coercion or bribery will be met with the appropriate response.”

 

Beyond her, John had stepped back into the doorway. “And I’ve mentioned, I think, that we’ll wait for whoever will be taking statements.” John’s tone was unamused. Sherlock could not specifically recall the PCO who was in their living room, but she seemed to hold a particular grudge against him.

 

“Mister Watson-”

 

“Doctor,” Sherlock corrected.

 

The PCO glared at the back of his head. Sherlock ignored it. John cleared his throat.

 

  
_“Doctor_ Watson, thank you for the offer, but no.”

 

John shrugged. Sherlock hid his smile, pleased at the small indication that they remained on the same side.

 

The PCO sighed. “You have to admit this is a bit off.” She gestured to where Milton was lolling on the couch. “You say he’s not badly injured, but-”

 

“There’s too much blood,” Sherlock said, not for the first time, echoing his mate’s astute observation.

 

  
*


	4. Chapter 4

 

Here he was on Montague Street when he ought to be headed home to the wife.

 

All because of Sherlock Holmes.

 

A constable had taken the initial dispatch. The whole street wasn’t marked off as the eccentric ex-addict’s (hopefully ex, or he had no problem turning the man in for it this time) private territory. It wasn’t until that particular building became the scene of the disturbance, and until the blood in the stairwell led right up to the man’s door.

 

Putting the car into park, Gregory Lestrade climbed out into the night. There was an ambulance on the way, but Lestrade had beaten it there. From the CSO at the front door, it seemed he had even beaten Constable Trimble there. The CSO seemed only too happy to see someone above his rank, and Lestrade was given a succinct rundown of what had happened.

 

One of the neighbors had called in a noise disturbance, and then when a second neighbor was coming home the blood on the entryway was found. When the CSO arrived - the PCO had got there first, the man at the door said - expecting a heated domestic, she had happened upon the… situation within.

 

He wondered what sort of carnage he had to look forward to.

 

Honestly, this sort of carnage had never been Sherlock’s style. He’d had someone the last time that he had relations with, and though they were a bit acerbic to one another, it was nothing along the lines of a relationship that might have this kind of a row.

 

Then again, Sherlock could be an insufferable bastard. Lestrade could imagine a queue of people lining up to beat some sense into him without even stretching his imagination. Not to mention the older brother.

 

He headed past the CSO into the building and up the stairs.

 

On the third floor there railing there was a smudge of blood, and then again on a very familiar door frame three down the hall from the top of the landing. It had been years since he’d last been in the building, last seen all of this, and at the time, things had been much different. It was early morning the last time, and the hall had gotten a paint job. Still, it was familiar. Before, there had been an angry bear of a woman living just downstairs, one who had a scowl that could freeze your blood in your veins. She had an over-sized cat that had a penchant for daring escapes and went into fits from time to time. Greg could almost see the fluff-ball streaking down the hallway. This was the same place, he was sure of it.

 

Lestrade gathered all of his remaining patience as he headed down the hall to where the door stood open and he could see the arm of another CSO. There was even the same dent and scratch in the wood of the open door. This was the same door, alright. He stopped in the doorway for a final breath to himself, hoping to survey the scene a bit before Sherlock began his rather-overwhelming dialog about whatever had happened.

 

With the door open it was easy to see inside, so Lestrade took the moment of that last solitary breath to take in the people he could see through the door. There was a bloody man on the couch - right where the CSO at the entry door had said he’d be - and another man leaning against the mantle with a teacup in one hand.

 

That man was not Sherlock Holmes.

 

The man against the mantle had sandy blond hair, a bit of stubble on his cheeks, strong shoulders and a healthy complexion to his skin.

 

Sherlock Holmes was no light weight, of course, but he was tall, pale and a bit angular.

 

Lestrade’s thoughts skipped at that.

 

Sherlock Holmes was _not_ the short, sandy blond man leaned at the mantle in a jumper sipping tea.

 

So who was the tea-drinker?

 

Greg took a step back into the hall, checking the blood on the wall before taking out his phone to check the message he’d received. This was the right flat, that just wasn’t Sherlock Holmes.

 

“Someone want to catch me up?” Lestrade asked the PCO that was standing awkwardly near the door, keeping an eye on the bloody man on the couch and, possibly, the blond man sipping the tea. It was hard to tell though, the blond man might have been eying the PCO.

 

“There’s too much blood, _obviously,”_ the blond man said, taking another sip of his tea.

 

Greg wanted to laugh at that, for some reason that he couldn’t fathom. Something about the short man nonchalantly declaring something like that was worth a chuckle. But that would be utterly inappropriate. This was at least partially a crime scene, and this man could very well be a suspect. “And you are?”

 

“John Watson,” the blond man said.

 

“Friend of yours?” Greg asked, indicating the unconscious man on the couch. The man who appeared to have been cared for. That was… odd. “It’s just that you don’t really look like the type to know-” Greg checked his pad. “Milton.”

 

“Exactly,” the Watson fellow said, sounding more than a little annoyed.

 

“Honestly, Lestrade, you’d be better off having his shirt sent away to find out whose blood is all over him.”

 

Lestrade jerked to the side, surprised that he hadn’t noticed Sherlock standing by the windows. It wouldn’t be the first time the tall man had seemed to materialize behind him, but it still shocked him every time Sherlock surprised him. Sherlock stood with his back to the frame, sipping a cup of tea. He looked annoyed, but Lestrade had never seen him look anything other than annoyed.

 

At least when he was sober.

 

“It will save you the time in checking our alibis.”

 

There was some noise on the stairs that announced the paramedics. Lestrade stepped aside, only to be surprised when this ‘John Watson’ fellow stepped forward to intercept them. “Shallow lacerations, almost entirely to the front of his head, though there was one that went back behind his ear. I didn’t find anything else, but I’m sure he was injected with some sort of a hallucinogen. Came in shouting that he needed help, and was unsteady on his feet. He’s been in and out for about an hour, some pupil response but no respiratory obstruction.”

 

The lead paramedic nodded, looking just as surprised by the direction as Lestrade felt hearing it. Then John Watson stepped back and let them at their patient. He picked up his tea cup again, sipping it for a moment before he noticed Lestrade was watching him. “Tea, Sergeant?”

 

“I…” Lestrade found himself at a loss. He was unsure what to make of this unassuming man - some medical training, or at least a good Google-search on his phone - that had been waiting beside Sherlock.

 

“You’ll find John is quite adept at making tea, Lestrade,” Sherlock cut in. “If you must be tedious about the proceedings, you may as well enjoy the hospitality.”

 

“I can’t question either of you here,” Lestrade said, shaking his head as the paramedics got Milton from the couch to a stretcher and made their way out.

 

“Last I checked there was no crime committed in the flat,” Sherlock said, glancing at the couch and wrinkling his nose. “Obviously we’ll need a new sofa, but throwing out furniture-”

 

  
_“Sherlock,”_ Watson said with a frown.

 

Sherlock looked over at Watson, narrowed his eyes, but shut his mouth.

 

Lestrade absolutely had to know how John Watson had managed to do that. Sherlock had an impertinent tongue in his head to go with the razor wit and the catalog of bad habits he’d picked up from… whatever public school he’d gone to. It had taken the threat of actual incarceration to shut Sherlock’s mouth on their last meeting. This was… amazing, really.

 

“This is setting a dangerous precedent of indulgence, John,” Sherlock huffed, turning to the window.

 

  
_“This_ is called keeping you out of handcuffs,” Watson retorted.

 

For a moment, all Lestrade could do was stare between the two of them.

 

“Tea, Sergeant?” Watson asked again.

 

*


	5. Chapter 5

Once Milton was carted off, the PCO at their door excused herself. It might have been that she was no longer necessary, or it might have been Sherlock’s sniping that she really ‘ought to get that rash checked out, it’s not mysterious, it’s likely herpes’. John wanted to leave the room at that point. The teacup in his hand was the only thing keeping him from either blowing up or breaking down. Their argument from before the officers arrived was echoing loudly in his head, like the ring off from an explosion. The number of people flitting about made the flat seem less secure than it normally did, and John…

 

John’s skin was crawling, just enough to set him on edge. He resisted the urge to pace or to fidget because he knew that would make him look guilty, and he wasn’t guilty, he didn’t even know bloody Milton.

 

And this was enough to set his teeth on edge. This _wasn’t_ how things were supposed to be. The flat wasn’t supposed to be the bloody tarmac for the MPD. It wasn’t that John wanted more closed doors in his life, not after the last seven months. But this was the same loss of privacy from Russia. This was the same feeling of eyes on him.

 

He hadn’t realized it before, but he had grown accustomed to feeling _safe_ with Sherlock. And this was Sherlock’s place - their place, and it should feel just as safe as his mate did. But here in a place that was supposed to be safe, he felt like he was back in captivity.

 

This time, though, John didn’t have the same sense of connection to Sherlock.

 

John’s eyes shifted over to look at his mate, leaned beside the fireplace as far away from John as the living room would allow. It was edging him towards break down rather than explosion.

 

And then there was Sergeant Lestrade - who obviously knew Sherlock-

 

No, who obviously knew _quite a bit_ about Sherlock-

 

  
_No._ Who obviously knew quite a bit _more about Sherlock than John did_ \- which was becoming a trend in John’s life that he could really do without. That edged him right back in favor of explosion over break down. The two sensations remained about neck and neck in the race for John’s final reaction. Rather than focus on it, he’d gone about defusing himself with the cunning application of tea.

 

Sergeant Lestrade would _not_ have a cup of tea. John wasn’t surprised, but the man looked too exhausted to do much other than arrest them, and quite literally they had done nothing wrong.

 

If anything, John had been a good Samaritan.

 

Sherlock was glaring at him from next to the fireplace. They hadn’t anywhere else to sit other than the couch, and none of them seemed to want to sit on the blood stained cushions.

 

Instead they were standing. John sipped his tea again - a second, fresher cup - and waited.

 

Lestrade looked between the two of them, with the same air of confusion that he had worn when he first saw John in the flat. “It might be better-”

 

“Whilst John is only recently acquainted with my former drug usage,” Sherlock cut in, “I see no point in treading lightly over the subject in his presence.”

 

The sergeant jerked a little at that. “Are you sure about that, Sherlock? That bloke from last time-”

 

“It happened _once,”_ Sherlock said viciously.

 

John could recall Sherlock insisting that in Wiltshire, but now he had more of an idea what that was about. There were only two reasons a cop would be involved with someone on drugs that John could think of - either overdose or arrest. He tightened his grip on his mug, trying not to jump to conclusions.

 

“And John is certainly not Mycroft.”

 

He couldn’t help but chuckle at that.

 

“No one is Mycroft,” the sergeant replied. “I’m fairly certain even _Mycroft_ isn’t Mycroft most of the time.”

 

“Do you _listen_ to yourself speak?” Sherlock grumbled.

 

“Routinely. More often when the person I’m talking to refuses to do it.” The sergeant folded his arms and frowned. “I meant what I said, Sherlock. I don’t care if your brother is the bloody Queen herself, if any of this has to do with any combination of you and an illegal substance in the present tense, I will haul you to jail for it. They can sort you right into rehab, and then I’ll wash my hands of this.”

 

“Please,” Sherlock sneered. “Milton careened in here relatively under his own volition.”

 

“Constable Trimble said I had until you got yourself in handcuffs to talk to you,” the sergeant said. “The joke’s apparently on me. He meant until I slapped them on you.”

 

“Which would be a marvelous exercise in wasting time. You would have to arrest the both of us, and then it would be a very tedious-”

 

“Both of you?” The sergeant cast a dubious look at John, then.

 

“It can’t have escaped your notice that we are in a _one bedroom_ flat, Lestrade,” Sherlock quipped with an elaborate roll of his eyes.

 

“You assume I don’t put it past your brother to have got you someone on-call to help manage your problem.”

 

Sherlock puffed up, sucking in a breath to launch into what was, John could tell, undoubtedly a rather righteous streak of insults, or possibly a graphic description of just what the two of them had gotten up to that morning and likely would be up to now if the unfortunate man hadn’t intruded on them. Neither of those would keep Sherlock out of handcuffs.

 

John didn’t think he had the patience to talk Sherlock back out of them, and the last thing he wanted was to have to call Mycroft to sort a damn thing. He cut right across Sherlock’s bluster with, “No one hired me for anything.”

 

“Precisely,” Sherlock growled.

 

The sergeant lifted both brows at John, and then looked down to check his notepad. “Right.”

 

John’s mood tipped in favor of explosion, agitation a sort of ticking clock. He kept a tight grip on his temper. It wouldn’t do any good for both of them to mouth off at the policeman. Whoever this sergeant was, he hadn’t started off with just throwing them into the car and dragging them down to the station. That had to be worth something, at least keeping calm enough to prove their alibis. “We were out of town until a few hours ago,” he said. “I’ve got our ticket stubs if you’d like.”

 

“If you wouldn’t mind, Mister Watson.”

 

“Doctor,” Sherlock corrected.

 

Rather than rise to the bait, John headed over to where their coats were hanging. He tried not to wonder what he would find in Sherlock’s pockets.

 

“This is the sort of thing you call 999 for, Sherlock,” the sergeant chided. “You can’t just… put a plaster on a bloody drug dealer and send him on his way.”

 

“The plasters were John’s idea.”

 

The receipt from the train purchase wasn’t in the outside pockets of Sherlock’s coat, so John had to search for the inside one.

 

“I don’t care whose idea it was,” the sergeant said. His frown was turning into a scowl. “It’s not what you do. No one with a record-”

 

“There is no _record_ of that unfortunate incident, if you recall.”

 

“Not on paper, you great blundering dolt,” the sergeant said. “Despite your opinion that the rest of us are idiots, it doesn’t take a genius for me to remember you two stone underweight and vomiting your guts out in the loo.”

 

Something in John snapped.

 

Years ago, John had done rotations in the A&E. It was a battleground entirely different from the one he’d gone to later. At the time it hadn’t affected him, even on the bloodier nights when his fellow doctors and the nurses were all bothered by the constant flow of injuries. John’s imperviousness to the carnage had been one of the things that settled his mind about going into the army, actually.

 

But that empty response was years ago, before the bombs and the sniper’s bullet and the wolf attack and the sterile facility, before Sherlock.

 

Now when he heard the sergeant’s description, he remembered quaking bodies struggling with an overdose. He remembered the hopeless sigh of the seasoned nurses and the knowing looks that said, plainly, _This one won’t last the night._  


 

That had been Sherlock.

 

The wavering between breakdown and blow up was gone.

 

The teacup slipped from John’s fingers as his hand spasmed. He barely heard it hit the floor.

 

It took three strides for Sherlock to grip him by the shoulders. The warmth of his hands was a shock. “John.”

 

“You overdosed.”

 

“Breathe, John.”

 

“You _fucking_ overdosed.”

 

“Look, mate,” the sergeant began, but his concerned tone fell into the background.

 

“John, I’m alright, I-”

 

“Let go, Sherlock,” John said in a low, dangerous voice.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, John, reall-”

 

“Let. Go.”

 

“OI!” The sharp snap of the sergeant’s words cleared John’s head for a moment. “I don’t know exactly who you are, Doctor Watson, but that’s a bit much.”

 

John stared at the floor, because he knew that if he looked up at the sergeant then he would say or do something completely out of line with the ‘not ending up in handcuffs’ goal from earlier. He felt Sherlock grip his shoulders, felt his mate’s concern nudging at him.

 

“Maybe you should step away from your friend there, Sherlock,” the sergeant suggested in a calming tone.

 

The implication in those words made John so angry he felt sick. He started to turn to reply to it, but Sherlock was quicker.

 

  
_“Honestly,_ Lestrade,” he snapped, “if your skills as a detective have led you to thinking that John is an abusive lover, then I have some very serious questions regarding your promotion.”

 

“Lover?” the sergeant coughed out.

 

“So ready to believe him a hired doctor, despite the obvious right in front of you?” Sherlock sneered.

 

“Let’s just get the questioning over with,” John gritted out, clinging to the very last shred of patience that he had.

 

Despite John’s edict, they all stood awkwardly with the silence hanging in the air between them. It was probably to do with how well the sergeant knew Sherlock’s history, and how pissed off John was despite his efforts to hang on otherwise. He could feel Sherlock’s general agitation, like a sip of sour milk in his tea, and it wasn’t helping his mood. He wanted this man out of their flat, hell, he wanted out of their flat, if he was honest. His eyes kept drifting for the door.

 

A minute stretched into minutes and the moment lingered.

 

“Right…” the sergeant said, finally. “Did you find it?”

 

John held out the train receipt to the sergeant, who took them, jotting down a note on his notepad.

 

“So, let’s go through the sequence of events…”

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes about details and a little random background, if you're interested, can be found over on [tumblr](http://darkwoodwrites.tumblr.com/post/143516260052/tolerance-ff-notes). Didn't want to clutter the fic notes too much with things that could be a sidebar to some folks.


	6. Chapter 6

In the end photographs taken, and there was a rather long conversation about the train trip, the address in Wiltshire, and what had happened around Milton’s arrival. John did most of the talking, with Sherlock interjecting when he felt John had forgot something. John kept his eyes on the sergeant, doing his best to keep his temper in check as the soft interrogation played itself out. He could feel Sherlock’s concern, and it was distracting. The sergeant kept a watchful eye on him throughout, and that grated on John’s nerves. Once the questions were all asked and the notes were all taken, the sergeant told the pair of them in no certain terms that they were not to ‘jaunt back out to the country’. Then the sergeant and the PCO at the door left, and though it was half-two in the morning when the door was closed again, the door _was_ closed again.

 

John hated how much better he felt with it shut, as though they had been exposed and vulnerable with it open.

 

With the door to the hall safely shut, John relaxed the grip he was keeping on his temper. He decided to clean up the broken cup and the spilled tea, which had been abandoned during the explanations.

 

While John was cleaning up, Sherlock got a call.

 

“For heaven’s sake, Mycroft, it’s not what you think,” Sherlock said as he answered it, turning for the bedroom. A scowl took over his expression as he walked. “I’ve explained-”

 

At the door to the bedroom, Sherlock paused long enough to glance at John that was laced with concern. Then he closed himself inside, either to spare John the volume or to indicate he wanted privacy to argue it out with his brother.

 

Either one was useless, considering the volume with which he was speaking. Sherlock’s voice cut straight through the door. “Don’t be absurd,” he began, all his consonants sharp and his vowels clipped. “Honestly, Mycroft, I’d given you more credit than this. Years ago, Mycroft, _years-”_  


 

John shut his ears to it. He kept his eyes on the glass as he dried the tea from the floor. Then he balled up the paper towels. Then he carefully swept the glass up. Then he carried the whole sharp mess of it into the kitchen to the overwrought bin. The little pieces of action were enough to soothe him, at least in part.

 

But then it was all cleaned up. There were no more pieces.

 

John looked around.

 

The flat was a worse wreck than normal. He could recall the flurry of activity that had been their packing for Wiltshire, made late enough by the pleasant distraction of naked bodies that there were articles of clothing interspersed through the general clutter of Sherlock’s filing system. And now the couch was bloody. John knew he should pick up the clothes, but with the door to the bedroom shut there was nowhere to put them away. That left the couch. He didn’t want to get started on that and then have to stop.

 

Cleaning blood out of upholstery was a thankless job.

 

John grit his teeth together against the memory of all the scrubbing, clenching his fists against a surge of renewed agitation.

 

Rather than think too much about what getting it cleaned would cost if he didn’t do it, or what replacing it would be like considering Sherlock’s inconsistent implacability when it came to selecting items to purchase, John pulled his jacket on and headed out.

 

Sherlock could think and say what he liked, but right now the flat was too small for all of John’s agitation. Walking had always been a good way to clear his head, even if it was rather late at night for it.

 

It hadn’t rained much that day, so the sidewalks were mostly dry. John checked up and down the street. There were some lights still on in the townhouses up and down the street, and it wasn’t particularly dark with the streetlights. The residential street was quiet, and for a moment John wondered if Sherlock was the strangest thing on it. There were trees down to the right, green leaves gone golden in the glow of the streetlights. John turned for them, wanting a bit of a destination even though he wasn’t so naive as to loiter around a park in the middle of the night.

 

As John headed out, his mate’s agitation faded from a present companion breathing in the same air space to just another pedestrian walking along the same path. The sensation of putting one foot after the other on the sidewalk soothed him, like the city was leeching his tension out through the concrete beneath his feet.

 

The park was empty, at least from the distance of the entrance. If John were in another mood, he might not risk the possibility that the park wasn’t empty as it looked. But he was, still, pissed. He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and headed into the park.

 

Every Watson had their own vice, and John’s had always been his temper. His mother would call this _spoiling for a fight._ She was always good at pointing out the moods of her Watsons. Her pronouncements about Harry often ran to the tune of how she was _drowning for a drink._  


 

John really didn’t know how the introductions with his family were going to go.

 

He tried to picture Harry in the same space as Mycroft, or-

 

He would rather not think about it.

 

The path headed up to the center of the park where there was a fountain in the center of a pond. Benches around the edge of the circle were almost entirely empty, except one where a homeless person was tucked under a ratty looking sleeping bag and several unfolded newspapers. John sat a few benches over from him, but didn’t disturb the man. Everyone who could be ought to be asleep at this hour.

 

It was a curious feeling, having his anger trickling out of him like that. Like a cracked basin being emptied of water, John felt … hollow without it. For a moment there was nothing left in him at all.

 

John could only dimly feel Sherlock’s agitation. He chuckled softly, humorlessly. Mycroft was certainly good at pushing his mate’s buttons.

 

The empty space inside him spread, and John’s thoughts drifted. The gentle noise of the water served to calm John further, and then in his empty thoughts the gentle noise of the water wasn’t the water anymore. There was another time with something wet hitting something wet, somewhere hot and bright. The whole world was the color cast off by the street lights - an unforgiving amber.

 

_The water is dripping steadily._

 

_This is it, finally._

 

_Of course._

 

_An IED had started the ambush, and then there were fangs and the hideous noises of crunching bones. But that was hours ago, at night, before, and now… now John is down on one side with a hole in his water bottle and his blood spilling into the dirt. The dripping noise, that’s Harris. What’s left of Harris, at least. John can see it, because the last thing that had happened to his body - just a kid, first tour, that’s not the way this happens, not the way life ends, it can’t be - was that it was thrown into the remains of their truck._

 

_John’s been bleeding since the attack, and somehow in the night his blood didn’t soak straight into the ground beneath him._

 

_The **plat, plat, plat** noise is Harris’s blood splashing in a pool._

 

  
__The amber is the sun overhead, and John is thirsty. He closes his eyes against the glare though it won’t do a damn bit of good against the dehydration, and sometime soon the carrion birds wil—_ _

 

A stab of anxiety from Sherlock jarred away the flashback.

 

There went the end of the phone call, then.

 

John came back to the park gasping for breath as though he’d been held under water. He didn’t remember holding his breath, but the air rushed into his lungs and he couldn’t get enough of it. The echoes of the park - the fountain and the insects - came back and John was once again on the bench beneath the trees. John could feel his heart pounding in his chest, but he didn’t know if that was from the flashback or from Sherlock’s anxiety. Either way the thudding of it was a disturbing, almost painful sensation.

 

It was still a bit odd feeling what Sherlock was feeling, but it was… strangely nice to have someone else’s feelings when he was sick of his own. John closed his eyes and let himself feel it, let Sherlock’s feelings wash over him.

 

He caught his breath. The painful awareness of his heartbeat subsided, overtaken with awareness of Sherlock.

 

At this distance, John couldn’t _hear_ the door slamming as Sherlock rushed out of the flat, but he could imagine it. He could imagine the quick calculation of the hour, the lack of John’s coat. He could almost hear Sherlock’s tread on the stairs in those ridiculously overpriced shoes.

 

Another rush of annoyance, and then it faded back into anxiety. He could almost see the barely there tilt of Sherlock’s head as he scented the air to catch which way John had gone.

 

It wouldn’t take Sherlock long to find him. John wasn’t hiding.

 

It _didn’t_ take long. The footsteps were quiet, even as they moved briskly across the park. John left his eyes closed and stretched his arms out on the back of the park bench.

 

He felt Sherlock draw up in front of him. The man was like a force of nature, sometimes. He carried a different air pressure with him when he came and went.

 

“You were gone,” Sherlock said, just a touch out of breath.

 

“Yup.”

 

“It’s late, you shouldn’t-”

 

“Stop.” John opened his eyes and looked up at his mate.

 

Sherlock had been about to reply. He cut himself off mid-sentence, but glared.

 

“I know it’s late, you know I’m pissed. You’re the one that dislikes obvious conversations.”

 

Sherlock scowled at him. A still-detached part of John wondered how many more facial expressions Sherlock had in his arsenal to express displeasure. The still-agitated part of John didn’t give a flying fig.

 

“Sit down, you bloody wanker,” John said.

 

Sherlock stared, and John relented, patting the bench beside him.

 

It still took a moment, but Sherlock did just that, long legs and wool coat radiating warmth from the spot beside John. He sat half turned toward John, brows in a serious line, eyes darting up and down him as though checking for injuries. “It’s dangerous to be out this late.”

 

“You keep saying that like it’s some sort of deterrent,” John replied. “I told you I had a problem with that before we started. And I can look after myself.”

 

The noise that Sherlock made in response was accepting.

 

“You’ve got to get over that three-meter thing you’ve got going on.”

 

“What?”

 

“Three meters,” John replied. “You twitch and turn to look for me if I’m farther than that away from you.”

 

“You underestimate the affect-”

 

“Bullshit, Sherlock,” John interrupted. “You were fine just now until you thought about it. I know. It’s impossible for me not to. You broadcast your emotions so loud it’s like standing in the sun.”

 

Sherlock huffed at that, turning to look at the fountain sharply.

 

“It’s not a criticism, it’s an observation,” John replied. “You of all people ought to recognize the distinction.”

 

John reached his hand forward, placing it on Sherlock’s back.

 

Sherlock sighed slightly, glancing at him with a very concerned expression on his face. “Do you not… want me anymore?”

 

And didn’t _that_ sound like an excluded child? John felt the words like a knife in the gut. He fisted his hand in Sherlock’s coat and pulled him close, wrapping both arms around him. “How could you ever ask me that?” he said softly into the wool-clad shoulder.

 

Sherlock sagged in his grip for a moment and then shifted until he could look down at John, “Do you? You seem so angry about everything, and so calm about being separated.”

 

The eyes that focused on him were keen, and John felt as though they were looking right into him. Looking into him, but missing something that ought to have been obvious. “You can’t come up with a reason I might have been angry tonight?” John asked.

 

“No,” Sherlock said flatly. “I fail to see how _you_ are allowed to pass judgment on _my_ past, John.”

 

For a moment, the door to the furnace of his temper threatened to burst open, but John managed to keep it shut. “First, it’s not judgment, Sherlock. Second, I’m allowed to be upset when I… do you even know what those sorts of drugs do to you?”

 

“I’ve become quite precise with the dosage, John.”

 

“I’m a _doctor,_ Sherlock.”

 

“And I do not have the body systems of your usual patients. I have never been _addicted_ to cocaine. I’m not entirely sure it’s possible for us.”

 

John put his forehead against Sherlock’s shoulder, breathing carefully. Sherlock was so casual about it, like they were talking about planting window boxes or ordering tea. “And you think that makes it ok?”

 

“As it happened _before you,_ and I am _still here_ to argue through the pointlessness of your anger, I fail to see the problem.”

 

“Then let me try to explain this in a way that that big, galloping brain of yours can fathom it.”

 

“Please, enlighten me,” Sherlock sneered.

 

John took a breath and looked up again. “You said you were careful, but that sergeant says you overdosed. At least once. You said you can’t be addicted, but you have enough of a habit that the cops know you. But the idea of you not being here…” John’s chest tightened again, more of a clenching sort of feeling that felt like his heart was _stopping_ rather than beating too quickly. “Not just not being here as in being somewhere else, but being _dead_ , not existing. We would never have met, Sherlock, if you had died in the sergeant’s bathroom.”

 

Sherlock’s breath caught, and he stiffened in John’s grip. His lips moved for a moment, but no sound came out.

 

“And maybe I am taking issue with something I’ve no right to, but I don’t like thinking about that possibility.”

 

There seemed no response coming from Sherlock. John put his head against Sherlock’s arm again, closing his eyes. This time the noise of the water didn’t bother him, he had the noise of Sherlock’s breathing to stay him.

 

“I think I understand,” Sherlock said.

 

Sherlock shifted uncomfortably, and this close, John thought he could put a hand up and touch the conflicting emotions radiating off his mate. “You’re going to make me nauseous,” John warned softly.

 

“It will make two of us then,” Sherlock replied. “If you absolutely must be out of the flat at this hour, you could at least have picked somewhere interesting.”

 

“Anywhere you’d consider interesting would be more like hiding,” John replied, “and I wasn’t trying to hide from you, I just needed some air.”

 

Sherlock gave him a fond look, and then leaned down to kiss him.

 

John leaned into it, feeling the affection. He clung to that feeling, tightening his arms around Sherlock until he had to break the kiss to yawn. “That said. It’s the arse end of the day, and I’m knackered.”

 

A deceptively thin arm slid around John, and Sherlock pulled them both to their feet. “Let’s return, then.”

 

“We’re still going to have to work on that proximity issue.”

 

“Fine,” Sherlock agreed grudgingly, “but _you’re_ going to have to work on how not to be followed.”

 

*

 


	7. Chapter 7

Waking at the very end of the morning to a grumbling, gurgling sound, John was pleased to find Sherlock wrapped around him, doing his best octopus impression. It was secretly one of John’s favorites, especially when he needed the reassurance of proximity. After the night before - the cops, the information, the flashback - John had needed reassurance. He would never have said it aloud in those words, but it was true.

 

Warm lips pressed lazily at his throat, and Sherlock mumbled, “Too early.”

 

“Tell that to your stomach, it’s what woke me.”

 

Sherlock huffed, tightening his grip.

 

“Breakfast?”

 

Another snort.

 

“Tea?”

 

Still another.

 

Sherlock was obviously determined to stay in bed this morning, despite all metabolic necessities that might attempt to encroach on the plan.

 

John knew a way to get him up. “So that sergeant was a friend?”

 

The arms holding him stiffened, loosened, but didn’t quite fall away. “I don’t have _friends_ , John. Certainly not Lestrade. I have a pack, and I have you.” Belligerent, Sherlock tightened his arms on John and nibbled his neck.

 

“He seemed concerned enough for someone who’s not a friend,” John said. “How did you meet him?”

 

“I doubt that is a story that you truly wish to hear,” Sherlock said softly.

 

“I don’t ask things I don’t want to know.”

 

“Breakfast,” Sherlock declared, releasing John abruptly and rolling out of bed to his feet.

 

“Sherlock.”

 

His mate was through the door with no answer.

 

John flopped back against his pillow for a moment, closing his eyes in an attempt to get back to sleep.

 

“John! Breakfast!”

 

Of course.

 

“We’re getting rid of that couch today,” John announced, putting an arm over his face.

 

“Breakfast!”

 

“You know where the kitchen is. It’s your flat.”

 

John could feel Sherlock come back into the doorway, but he wasn’t expecting him to flop down on top of him, what with not looking and all.

 

“You are being uncharacteristically obtuse this morning,” Sherlock said. “Either this has to do with the revelations of last night, or you are being deliberately contentious in retribution to my avoiding your question.”

 

“Retribution?”

 

“Precisely,” Sherlock said, stretching out to his full length, taking John by the wrists and sliding his feet against John’s insteps as though he could somehow pull John’s limbs to a similar length of near-gangle.

 

“So if I’m raining down retribution, apparently through the withholding of breakfast-”

 

Sherlock’s stomach protested, but he seemed to ignore it in favor of pressing his forehead to John’s. Warm breath puffed against his cheek, and John really thought they both needed a trip to the loo to brush their teeth.

 

“- then what exactly are you doing?”

 

“Making my own breakfast.”

 

Sherlock proceeded to make a meal out of John. John couldn’t find it in him to protest. He decided that so long as intercourse didn’t start equaling forgiveness, they were alright. There wasn’t much to do to stop Sherlock, anyway, and his mouth was not to be turned down lightly.

 

When they were done there was less light to make Sherlock’s skin so blinding, and John’s stomach was the grumpy one. He got up, went to the bathroom, and then headed out to the kitchen.

 

Sherlock followed him, a smug smile on his lips, and flopped down in the solitary armchair in the living room.

 

“Not distracted,” John warned him as he perused the cupboards for whatever might be edible in a breakfast capacity. “Just in need of the appropriate fuel after your meal.”

 

“You make me sound like a vampire,” Sherlock muttered. “You enjoyed it.”

 

“Of course I did,” John replied.

 

Sherlock didn’t respond.

 

For a moment, John was distracted by his quest - the only edible thing in the cupboards seemed a questionably old container of cut-oats that would do for the hour, as it didn’t seem infested with anything - and then when Sherlock didn’t say anything else, John turned to look at him. “Sherlock?”

 

“Well it’s not as if you have any choice in the matter,” he said, and then pushed himself up out of the chair and headed across the room to one of the bookshelves.

 

“Excuse me, what?”

 

Sherlock took a large book from one of the shelves, checking the inside cover. “I hate repeating myself.”

 

“I only make you repeat things when you’re being absurd.”

 

“Biologically speaking, there is nothing absurd about that statement,” Sherlock replied primly. “Your body chemistry is receptive to mine. It’s part of mating with a wolf.”

 

“Maybe,” John allowed. When Sherlock shot him an ‘oh, please’ look, John amended, “Yes. But.”

 

“There is no ‘but’, John.”

 

“In this case there is.” John folded his arms. “Just because you put your tongue in my mouth-” Sherlock scoffed at that, but John kept right on, “-or anywhere else, for that matter, it doesn’t mean I’ve got no choice about it. Despite the shag fest to the contrary, I can control myself.”

 

Sherlock cocked his head curiously, narrowing his eyes slightly.

 

“You seem to be caught up in this whole ‘mated’ thing,” John went on. “Yeah, some things are different, and I’ve no clue what all those things are, but no surge of oxytocin in my brain is going to make me lie to you about anything.”

 

“Brain chemistry is a very powerful-”

 

“No amount of it will make me lie, Sherlock,” John said firmly. “Worse methods have been tried. I’m more than a bit stubborn.”

 

For a moment Sherlock just watched him. His eyes darted across John’s face, his lips twitched once, and then he snapped the book shut. “Yes, I had sort of figured.”

 

With a roll of his eyes and a shake of his head, John turned back into the kitchen, looking for the kettle.

 

“So when you said you enjoyed it?” Sherlock called from the living room.

 

“It was hot,” John replied, attempting to liberate the kettle from where it was lodged under far too much delicate looking glassware for one person to free it easily.

 

“When you say hot-?” Sherlock asked, voice coming closer.

 

“As in good, as in sexy.”

 

“Your vocabulary is astounding,” Sherlock said, voice sounding as though it was coming from the kitchen doorway.

 

“Bit distracted,” John said, finding a further impediment to liberating the up-ended kettle. It was stuck on something. John tightened his grip on the handle and gave it a yank. The kettle came free, but so did several of the larger pieces of glassware, followed by several of the smaller pieces with questionable stains on them. The glassware rolled across the countertop and then crashed to the floor in a small avalanche that quickly turned into a sea of shards very dangerous to bare feet. “Bollocks.”

 

When John started to jerk backwards, two strong hands held him still for a second. Then two strong arms threaded around his middle, and Sherlock scooped him up and out of the worst of the mess.

 

“Vocabulary, John.”

 

“ _Utter_ bollocks,” John replied. “You do realize the chord on the kettle is cut in two?”

 

“Mm.”

 

“Shower. We’re going out for breakfast.”

 

“Lunch,” Sherlock corrected. “It’s half-eleven.”

 

“Whatever.”

 

*


	8. Chapter 8

It turned out Sherlock knew a place. There was a little hole in the wall Greek restaurant just around the way, not the sort of thing that John expected to find in Bloomsbury of all places, but the kebabs were very, very good. Once they were finished, and everything was paid - John still didn’t know where Sherlock got his money, but from the delicious looking (and exorbitantly expensive) way his mate dressed, he didn’t have to worry just yet - Sherlock loitered on the sidewalk.

 

As Sherlock never _loitered_ anywhere, John tucked his hands into his pockets and waited. The loitering lingered, dragging on in silence while Sherlock seemed almost entirely absent from where they were standing on the sidewalk.

 

And still they were standing listlessly about, John looked up at Sherlock. “Problem?”

 

“You need a mobile,” Sherlock said, coming out of the trance-like way he had been looking at the street. He looked down at John, nodded, and then turned on his heel and marched down the street.

 

That was odd. Or, not really odd, but surprising. Especially considering what Harry had said at the station.

 

“I have one,” John replied, brows furrowing at Sherlock’s retreating back.

 

Sherlock all but jerked to a stop, turning on him. In three strides he was back and had a hand out in a demanding gesture.

 

“What?” John asked.

 

“Obviously if you have a mobile, I require the number.”

 

“I don’t have it on me.”

 

“What is _the point_ of having a _mobile_ phone if you leave it at the flat when you are _mobile?”_ Sherlock demanded, using altogether too much emphasis for any single question. Somehow that worked for him, though John didn’t think he could get away with it.

 

John really had no answer that he could give Sherlock that he wanted to own up to. Harry had forced the mobile at John at the train station, amidst the drunken fumbling hug and more tears than John was comfortable dealing with from her. He hadn’t turned it on since he’d reluctantly tucked it into the pocket of his jacket, so he didn’t even know the number himself.

 

“If you have such a problem with taking your sister’s gift, let’s go get one now.”

 

Disregarding how Sherlock knew it was from his sister, John still had a knee-jerk avoidance reaction. He didn’t want to talk about the one he wasn’t using, but he didn’t really fancy shopping for another one. He didn’t think he liked phones, really. “Sherlock, it’s not-”

 

“Well it is _something,_ and as you won’t talk about it, and it will solve a problem, the store is this way. Come along, John.”

 

Sherlock turned and started off again, and it didn’t even occur to John not to follow.

 

  
*


	9. Chapter 9

The store that sold mobiles in the general vicinity was… overwhelming. John could wield a scalpel, could arrange your organs back into your torso correctly whilst dodging bullets, could suture closed a wound, and so on. He had an iron stomach in the presence of blood, decay, and the thick black smoke from an IED, but as he followed Sherlock into the tech store, the over-clean metallic scent of the shop put a bad taste in his mouth.

More than a bad taste, though if asked John wouldn’t be able to explain what it was that stopped his feet.

Sherlock did not notice, at first, when John fell behind. Confident strides of his long legs took him clear across the shop while John lingered just inside the door, frozen in his tracks on the thick industrial carpet. He stared at the shop interior - the high ceiling, the modern fixtures evenly spaced overhead, the bright lights of the LED bulbs in them that left spots in his eyes when he looked up at them - and his breath stopped as well.

The brightly lit white room swam in front of him, and John forced himself to breathe as the space stretched dangerously tall, like it was trying to make Sherlock look short.

“What can we do for you today, sir?” a helpful clerk asked him, interrupting the vertigo that had taken over.

“N-nothing,” John said quickly, glad of something less sterile to focus on.

The clerk had reddish brown hair and a gray shirt which was, at least not white. She leaned closer, brows lifting, and John stared at her for a moment, taking in all the colors of brown that made up her eyes. She tipped her head, and John managed to blink and see her face instead of just her eyes. Her expression began to shift into a doubtful one, and she leaned back slowly.

“I’m just,” John said, grasping for words and pointing at Sherlock. “With him. He needed to-”

She gave a nod. “Well, if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know. I’m Amber.” Then she backed up, pointing to her nametag as though it was part of a script she’d been taught. Once she was out of John’s personal space, she turned and headed off towards the back of the room.

John took a step back, putting his back to the wall just on the inside of the security scanners that lined the entry. He closed his eyes to block out the sterile looking walls and the bright white that felt like it was trying to project straight into John’s skull. He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the scent of the room.

It didn’t take long before Sherlock’s head came up from the displays. John could feel it, just like he could feel Sherlock’s eyes lock onto him.

Sherlock strode back over. When John felt his mate close enough to blot out some of the white, he opened his eyes and looked up at him.

Sherlock was frowning. He gestured to the store. “You’re reticent to use the phone you have. This is where we will acquire a different one.”

John shifted, unable to frame the words he needed to explain the problem. All he came up with was, “Can we go?”

For a moment, Sherlock frowned. “It will be better if you have a mobile you will use.”

“Fine, I’ll use the one I have,” John said. “Let’s just go.”

It was John’s turn to lead the way then. Sherlock followed quietly, staring at the back of his head the entire walk back to number nineteen. The silence was good, just as the fresh air was good. That odd panicked feeling from the shop subsided and John felt almost normal— well, he felt almost _human_ again by the time they were back at the flat.

John couldn’t help but think just how amazing it was that the flat felt so much like home after only a few days living in it.

They were barely in the door when Sherlock started to ask something, only to be cut off by the chime of his mobile from his jacket pocket.

“Mycroft?” John asked, glad for that little bit of normal as well.

“Worse. Temperance.” He jabbed the volume button pointedly and tucked the phone back away. He held out a hand to John. “Let’s see it.”

Knowing there was no getting out of this eventually, but unwilling to let the matter from earlier drop, John folded his arms. “After my question from this morning. How did you meet Lestrade?”

“Must you be so-”

“Your other option is that we bin the couch and _then_ you answer.”

“That’s ridiculous-”

“I’m your mate, not your puppet, Sherlock,” John said patiently.

Sherlock huffed and flopped himself into the armchair, long legs stretched out in front of him. “You may as well get comfortable,” he said.

John surveyed his options - blood-stained couch, floor, or hard wooden kitchen chair - and dragged the chair in from the kitchen to sit on. “Alright. Go on.”

*


	10. Chapter 10

“People are tediously slow, John,” Sherlock said.

 

“Is this about the drugs or the meeting?”

 

Sherlock frowned inside, the nervousness from the previous evening gnawing at the bottom of his left lung like a parasite trying to-

 

“Stop that,” John said gently. “It’s not nearly so dire.”

 

It was hard to remember that John could read what he was feeling. Both helpful and detrimental, that.

 

“As I said, people are tediously slow,” he repeated.

 

“That’s not the whole story.”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“So you’re just… what? Making sure I heard statement number one?”

 

“Milton was one of my dealers,” Sherlock said, already bored with this demanded explanation. “He supplied me with cocaine. I have always been ruthless about having an untainted source. Paying extra was my concern, but I preferred that to the alternative of a secondary side-effect.”

 

“Dealers get picked up all the time, what about when your supply was cut off?”

 

“Morphine,” Sherlock replied. “Completely different suppliers.” He shrugged. “The statistical improbability of both of sets being unavailable at the same time made the two a reliable enough variance, as I was not addicted to the substances in question.”

 

From the look on John’s face, he was withholding his opinion, for the moment. Likely it had to do with some notion that was very obvious, possibly along the lines of: _It won’t get the story out of Sherlock. It’ll probably shut him down in, and might very possibly make him refuse to speak about it again._ It was an inaccurate line of theorizing, but not a bad start. What John did say was, “And the sergeant?”

 

“Lestrade was the nearest police officer to a murder I happened upon.”

 

“That must have been awkward.”

 

“I’ve been solving the Met’s cases for years,” Sherlock replied, “they rarely take the suggestions of their incompetence well.”

 

“You’ve been, what?”

 

“In this instance, I happened upon the scene of a murder. As I did not wish the personal scrutiny that would come from a close association with the crime scene, I found the nearest officer. CSO Lestrade was on patrol in the area. I took him to the scene.”

 

“Christ, they must have thought it was you.”

 

“Briefly,” Sherlock replied. “The amount of blood involved with the victim meant that my pristine appearance ruled me out as a suspect.”

 

“Then what-?”

 

“It was a crime, John,” Sherlock replied, growing impatient. “One that had apparently started as a robbery and escalated. There had been robberies in the area at the time, and I was there long enough to overhear that the method of entry was the same, but something had changed about the robbers, because they’d put an end to the middle-aged man they’d smeared across the walls.”

 

“It was personal?”

 

“That was the assumption, but it was incorrect,” Sherlock said, closing his eyes and reliving the room. It didn’t bring the same rush of pleasure to see the crime scene in his mind, the clarity of the room he could reconstruct was cold and factual. It had been a messy scene, to be sure, but now that it was solved it was as dead and empty as the bodies it had held. “The police assumed from the chaos of the room that the escalated violence of the murder was caused by recognition on the part of the victim. It was a gruesome affair, seemingly the man had been attacked from two different angles, by two separate attackers.”

 

Something changed, then. It felt like- Anticipation. Curiosity. Sherlock knew he had felt those things when he’d come across the puzzle, but once he had solved it, they had faded. Now they were just words that related to how he cataloged the scene in his mind. If he played the discovery from the beginning he passed through the sensations, but they were more like colors than feelings.

 

This was different.

 

He could _feel_ it.

 

“What they missed - a sad state of affairs that our police can miss things such as this, really, John - was that the victim had not been alone prior to the attack. Given the state of the flat I suppose some allowance ought to be made for the forensic analysts slowness of processing, but really, it can only be incompetence.”

 

And there, that was bemusement. The feeling was muted, just as the anticipation had been, as the curiosity was, but it was there. Almost like it was repressed or held back by something else.

 

“The police concluded, based on the scene, that the previous murders had been carried out by two individuals working in tandem, rather than by two like-minded individuals separately.”

 

“And how did you figure all this out?” John asked. He tipped his head, one brow lifting in query.

 

All of this feeling was _John._ Sherlock’s anxiety fled at the realization, and he stared at John, taking in all of the things that the retelling had stirred up in him.

 

“Sherlock?” John asked, voice gentler than it had been before. He was curious, again, and that was… that was nice.

 

“I deduced it,” Sherlock replied, smiling fondly at John’s curiosity.

 

“You deduced it, how exac- You went back to the crime scene.”

 

“It was a necessity,” Sherlock replied. “I put together the clues I’d taken in on my first visit only after I’d returned to my flat. In order to be certain I was correct I needed to compare.”

 

“So you… broke into a crime scene?”

 

“They had got it _wrong,”_ Sherlock said with a sigh.

 

“And then you-?”

 

“Contacted Lestrade again,” he replied. “He was rather helpful the first time.”

 

“How did that turn out for you?”

 

Sherlock frowned at the trapped feeling that came with that memory. It had been a desperate urge to escape, one that he’d felt with all the keen senses of the wolf within him.

 

“Sherlock?”

 

“Lestrade put me in handcuffs. It was utterly ridiculous. He spent twenty minutes lecturing me on how wrong it was to break into crime scenes, how suspicious.” Sherlock snorted. “How pedestrian.”

 

“I believe that’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re breaking in some where. But that can’t be all of it?”

 

Sherlock tipped his head. “What do you mean?”

 

“I doubt the sergeant would be so invested in you that he’d personally come and be the officer at a crime scene for you if that’s where the story ended,” John said. “If it were just that he’d have taken you in for questioning.”

 

“He tried to,” Sherlock admitted, drumming his fingers on the arms of the chair. “But I pointed out to him several things that were out of place, indicated that if the news had any notion of what the police thought had really happened then I would weep for the justice system in its entirety, and asked if they had recovered any of the man’s personal effects.”

 

“I take it they hadn’t.”

 

“None. There were no bills, no papers. I knew there wouldn’t be, of course. I had already called to check what name the utility services were established in, and though the electricity and gas were in the name of the deceased, the cable was in another name. He kept me in handcuffs until he verified my information - a tedious waste of time, I tell you - but then released me. I put him on the track of one of the real killers. After some more leg work I was able to identify the male as well. Felicia Oswald and Oscar Terrington were both captured. It turned out that they had been partners for some many years, and prior to burglary their racket had been more general confidence schemes.”

 

John was staring at him. Sherlock wondered, momentarily, if he had presented the situation poorly.

 

“That’s brilliant.”

 

“Oh.” Really, this was an unexpected pleasure, to be able to properly introduce his mate to his mental acumen.

 

“You got all that from… a quick glance at a dead body and some bloody footprints? Amazing.”

 

No, he could be honest about John, at least to himself. It was nice to have his mate appreciate his mental acumen. Even if he was bound to and dazzled by his bond with the wolf, John seemed impressed by _Sherlock._  


 

Sherlock didn’t preen. He was not the sort of person who did that sort of thing. He did, however, smile at his mate. He could _feel_ John’s approval beneath the praise, and it was warm with sincerity.

 

“Anyone trained to properly observe could do the same,” Sherlock said. “The trouble is that so very few people _observe.”_  


 

“I’m sure that’s the trouble,” John muttered. “Not the murdering and the abuse, the lack of observation.”

 

Rather than correct him, Sherlock held his hand out again. “Phone.”

 

John sighed.

 

“John. Phone.”

 

*


	11. Chapter 11

In the end, John gave Sherlock the phone, and set to cleaning the blood off the couch. Though there was no food to speak of in the house other than what John had gotten on his last run to the shop, but there were a surprising number of chemicals. The meat tenderizer was a brand name he was unfamiliar with, but it was the right stuff, so despite telling Sherlock they’d bin the bloody thing, he set about cleaning up as he’d seen his mother do when he was younger.

Sherlock perched in the arm chair, curled over the phone.

John was blotting one of the cushions when Sherlock said, “You two don’t get on.”

“Sorry?”

“You and Harriet,” Sherlock said with a rather sharp ‘t’ at the end.

Resisting the urge to tense, John continued the gentle scrubbing he was doing to the cushion. “How do you figure?”

“She gave you the phone, which you refuse to use.”

“I’m not refusing to use it,” John said, working at one of the marks intently. “I’m just not really used to carrying one.”

“She’s not used to giving presents either,” Sherlock said, turning the phone over to examine it, “or she might have considered giving you the charger as well. The battery’s dead.”

“Like I said-”

“Don’t be tedious,” Sherlock huffed. He smoothed a finger across the back of the phone. “She’s an alcoholic.”

John’s hand stopped on the cushion for a moment, and then he forced himself to keep going. “How do you figure?”

Sherlock held up the phone, back turned to John. “Scratch marks,” he said, indicating the area around the charging port. “Never seen a drunk’s phone without these sorts of markings, not the sort of thing common from a steady, sober hand,” he said. “The two of you don’t talk. She was surprised you were coming back, surprised you were injured.”

“Well it’s not like I’d had time to update my emergency contact paperwork,” John defended.

“She gave you the phone to make sure she could contact you, but failed to give you the charger. Either she was too drunk to think about such a thing or it’s common for her not to think things all the way through. I imagine Clara has a similar problem with her.”

John gave up pretending that Sherlock’s string of- what had he called them? Deductions? - that Sherlock’s deductions weren’t a whole lot like mind reading and looked up at his mate. “How-?”

“I’m very observant,” Sherlock said. He swung his legs off the arm of the chair. “You need a charger,” he said as he stood. “Let’s-”

“I can’t leave this half-done,” John said, gesturing to the cushion. “It might eat through the fabric.”

Sherlock tilted his head slightly at that, regarding John intently. “Learned it from your… mother?”

“Yeah. Don’t observe that yet,” John said.

“Deduce,” Sherlock corrected.

“Whatever. Don’t deduce it yet,” John said.

“Rinse it off and let’s go.”

“Go without me,” John replied. He didn’t fancy being confronted by the smell of that shop again. He didn’t know what smelling that again would do to him. “I’m going to finish this. Same shop? It won’t even take you an hour with those legs of yours, if you’re not waiting on me.”

Sherlock nodded, but hesitated, watching John. “If you don’t have a mobile…”

“Don’t be an over-protective git about this, Sherlock,” John said. “I’ll be here.”

“Forty-five minutes,” Sherlock said. He spun, grabbed his coat, and was out the door before John could mention anything else.

Apparently this was ‘working on’ the proximity issue.

The distance was abrupt and tangible. The feeling of it was a quick dropping feeling in John’s stomach, but without the associated anguish of being separated and angry that’s all it was, a mild discomfort. Sherlock was apparently moving fast. John couldn’t put it out of his mind, exactly, but he was able to keep working on the cushion.

There was a knock on the door about ten minutes after Sherlock left. For a moment, John was tempted not to answer it. The last time he’d answered Sherlock’s door it hadn’t gone too well.

“I would prefer if you opened the door, John,” the clipped voice of Mycroft Holmes cut through the door.

John didn’t particularly want to open the door this time either, but he had a sinking feeling that whatever Mycroft would do otherwise would be unpleasant. He rose from where he was working on the couch and went to let Mycroft in.

There was a deceptively neutral expression on Mycroft’s face, one that John recognized from as far back as Dresden, and he stepped aside to let him in. “Tea?” he asked, heading into the kitchen. If he was going to have to listen to Mycroft make a fuss, he was going to have some, and it was only polite to offer some to a guest.

“Please,” Mycroft said, sounding somewhat surprised at the offer.

John went about making two cups of tea the terribly old fashioned way. There still hadn’t been a moment to replace the castrated kettle, but he had managed to find a relatively unharmed tea pot. “It’ll take a minute,” he called out to Mycroft.

“I find your manners refreshing, John,” Mycroft said. He stepped into the kitchen door.

“Well, that’s not condescending.”

“They are… quaint.”

John turned to glance at Mycroft. “Unnecessary?”

“Quaint,” Mycroft affirmed. “You’re rather polite for a trained soldier. Of course that could have to do with-”

John held up a hand. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather not have you repeat to me what Sherlock deduced this morning. It’s not why you came, anyway. We could start with that.”

“It distresses me that there has been a police visitation.”

“Oh. Yeah. That distressed me too,” John said, turning to find two mugs from the cabinet. He glanced at the wall clock and pulled down a third. Sherlock would be back soon.

“Particularly that the visitor was one of Sherlock’s former dealers. John, I had not thought we would need to discuss what is best for Sherlock, but obviously there is to be no further recreational usage of that sort.”

“Did you really just say ‘what is best for Sherlock’?” John asked, bristling at the choice of phrase. He cast a scathing look over his shoulder. “What is he? A child?”

Mycroft made an agreeing little hum and adjusted the cuff of his jacket.

Of course, John thought, of course this today.

“Mycroft,” John said calmly, turning to face the wolf in the kitchen doorway, “I don’t condone that kind of drug usage in anybody. Sherlock and I are currently having a spat about it, and all that happened was a bloody drug dealer came to the door.”

The well-dressed wolf paused, sniffing once and turning to glance back into the living room. “You mean that quite literally, I see.”

“Quite,” John agreed. He studied Mycroft for a moment. “But I suspect you already knew that.”

“Despite appearances,” Mycroft said primly, “I am not all-knowing. If a situation has not been documented, I am not immediately aware of all the particulars.”

“But it has been documented. You know, on documents. By New Scotland Yard,” John pointed out. “Some Sergeant that Sherlock knew came by and said we weren’t to leave town. They took the guy-”

“Milton Devons.”

“Milton. They took Milton to the station to see about all the blood. It’s all over the sofa,” John said, jabbing a finger at the offending piece of furniture in exasperation.

For a moment, Mycroft did not reply, and John stood there pointing an accusing finger in the general direction of the couch, which happened also to be in the general direction of Mycroft’s mid-section. Mycroft looked at John with a patient, even gaze, and John lowered his hand.

“You and Sherlock are having, what did you call it? A ‘spat’?”

“A disagreement,” John clarified, “an argument, if you want.”

“You continue to be a singular sort of man, John.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Well you have met Gerard.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I suppose he suits Marianne well enough,” Mycroft said, straightening upright and adjusting the fall of his coat. “But he wouldn’t last five minutes with Sherlock.”

“So she what, dominates him?”

“Regularly,” Mycroft replied.

That wasn’t exactly something that John wanted to think all the way through. Thankfully the tea kettle chose that moment to finish boiling and he was able to turn his attention to making the two cups of tea. He could feel that Sherlock was on his way back, the constant surge of emotion grew stronger as his focus returned. It was odd how comforting it was to know where Sherlock was.

“It takes a particular sort to stand up to my brother’s intellect,” Mycroft said, tipping his head as he observed John.

“I’d be angry with anyone who threw themselves away on drugs,” John said, the tension within him at odds with the relieved feeling of Sherlock’s approach. He delivered Mycroft the cup of tea, and wondered if he ought not have done that.

“You needn’t tense so, John,” Mycroft said, “we’re on the same side, you and I.”

“The more you say things like that, Mycroft, the less I believe them. Look, do you have anything else? Sherlock’s nearly back and I don’t think you two want to cross paths right now.”

“I have important information to relay,” Mycroft said, sipping his cup of tea. He paused, blinked once, and eyed John intensely before nodding in satisfaction.

“Right,” John said, sipping his own too-hot tea. He sat in the armchair and took in his brother-in-law with the beginnings of a scowl. “Well, I’d offer you a place to sit, but we’re a bit shy on the moment. I’m not sure what Sherlock has on the chairs in the kitchen.”

“Trust me when I say you would rather not know,” Mycroft said primly, shaking his head.

For a long moment they stood and sat in silence. John sipped the tea with another notch of a frown at the taste of it, eventually abandoning it to the little table at the side of the couch. Some things just weren’t worth the struggle to tolerate them, and he could feel Sherlock’s approach. With Mycroft standing in the room with him, the usually pleasant sensation came into stark contrast with the vaguely annoyed sensation of having Mycroft nosing about being disapproving for no good reason. The two at-odds emotions and the off-putting tea all added up to a lurch of queasiness that John struggled to keep under control.

Rather than focus on his own discomfort, John returned his energy to getting the blood out of the cushions.

The pulsar that was his mate came speeding back towards them. He felt Sherlock enter the building.

There was a pause, somewhere downstairs, and then the relieved return turned into an annoyed rush up the stairs. At least the double-annoyance made the queasy feeling less intense.

“Ah,” Mycroft said, settling his teacup in its saucer. He had been observing John’s hands while he has been scrubbing and noticed the stillness in them. “My brother returns.”

The door flung open and Sherlock stormed in, curls ruffled on his head and coat flapping around him for a moment before it and the small bag from the electronics store were both flung away onto the desk crammed into the corner. “Mycroft,” Sherlock snapped. “To what do we suffer the pleasure?”

The teacup was extended on its saucer. John glanced up at Mycroft from where he was working, and Sherlock snorted. Mycroft was forced to set the teacup and saucer on the nearest bookshelf.

“Gosforth.”

The word spread through the air in the sitting room, like a puff of sewer gas emitting from a trap.

“What’s that?” John asked, when Sherlock did not immediately pounce on the topic.

Sherlock turned to look at John, then back to Mycroft, and his eyes glinted. “Precisely the sort of self-important name one would expect from an organization that cannot even recognize two separate members of the same species in their presence.”

“A single team could not,” Mycroft corrected. He contemplated the tilt of his brother’s shoulders for a moment and his expression shifted.

“Meaning there may be more than one,” John concluded, looking between the two of them.

Mycroft’s face gave away nothing that John could see, but Sherlock’s answering grin was almost manic.

“What more have you found out?” Sherlock asked, swiveling back to face his brother.

“That is all, for now,” Mycroft said.

Sherlock’s scowl at that reply was a full-body expression that began in his shoulders and telegraphed down the length of him until even the spread of his feet seemed to be displeased somehow. “Then what brought you to- Oh. Oh, _of course._ You’ve come to interrogate John about my drug usage.”

“Your mate has been less than forthcoming,” Mycroft replied, just primly enough to express his displeasure with John.

“John is exceptional in that way,” Sherlock said, smugly.

“Was Milton displeased with you for current purchases or prior ones?” Mycroft asked.

“You know perfectly well that I have purchased nothing from Milton in more than a year,” Sherlock snapped back.

“Then the state of you when I came to inform you that John would be returning was-”

Sherlock jerked, casting a quick glance at John, but it was the rush of _guilt_ that did in his little charade.

“I’m sorry, what?” John asked, a cold feeling creeping into him.

“Then I am to understand that your ‘spat’ is about prior drug usage. Ah. Sergeant Lestrade was the answering officer, after all.”

John set down the cloth he was using on the couch, and stood up.

Sherlock frowned, and John felt a shock of _worry_ directed at him, but ignored it.

“Bin the couch,” John said, tugging his sleeves down. He put on his jacket and headed out of the flat.

The resulting row he closed behind the door as he left echoed through his heart more than his ears.

*


	12. Chapter 12

“Watson? John Watson?” John heard from behind him as he headed down one of the paths in Regent’s Park.

In a city the size of London, John didn’t expect he’d go unnoticed forever, but he wasn’t sure who it was that had called out to him. He turned, surveyed the path, and saw a rounded man waving to him. He nodded back, heading over.

“Stamford,” the rounded man replied. “Mike Stamford?”

It took a moment, but it clicked. John smiled and nodded. “From Bart’s, yeah?”

“It was an age,” Stamford replied. “I’m not surprised you didn’t recognize me.” He patted the roundest part of himself. “I’ve packed on a few since then.”

“Filled out is the polite term,” John replied.

Stamford laughed at that, and nodded. “The wife’s got me on a diet, it’s been a while since I heard anything polite about it.”

It was John’s turn to chuckle.

“Coffee?” Stamford asked.

John nodded, and they headed for one of the cafes. It was a nice enough day, so they headed back out into the lanes of the park and found a bench. It was a pleasant enough walk, but John wasn’t sure what to say to the man he’d been at school with. Thankfully, Stamford had some idea.

“I’m still at Bart’s,” he said. “Picked up on that before we were even finished. Teaching, now,” the man said. “I did some time in the A&E, but the hours were crap. Took a turn in surgery, better pay, better hours. Suited the wife more.”

“Wife?” John asked. It was the second time she had been mentioned, it was only polite to inquire.

“Quite,” Stamford replied, shifting to fish out his wallet. “That’s Christine there,” he pointed to one of the pictures, “and our daughter, Kate.”

“They’re lovely,” John said, sipping his coffee with a real smile. A smile that surprised him. He was happy for Mike, and he said so. “That’s great. Cheers.”

“And what about you, then?” Stamford asked. “You joined the army, after all? You said you’d wanted it. The rush of excitement, getting shot at. Well, what happened?”

“I did.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Mike frowned. “Are you still-”

“Ah, no,” John replied.

“Do you mind if I ask?”

“I was shot,” John clarified.

Stamford’s expression fell to one of sympathy, and John shook his head with a little chuckle. “I’m sorry, mate, I-”

“No, no,” John said. “It was months ago.”

There was silence for a moment, again, and Stamford sipped his coffee. John could almost see him gathering himself up again, and prepared to be left alone.

“Would you like to come see the old place?” Stamford said.

John was a little surprised, and he nodded before he could think of a refusal.

“A bit of nostalgia, is all,” Stamford assured him.

John was glad for the distraction of the walk from Regent’s to Bart’s. The hospital stood just about how he’d remembered it, and Stamford ushered him inside, nodding them through the reception area and into the hospital proper.

Somewhere during the tour of Bart’s, which had changed some, and filled with a fresh wave of ‘bright, young things’, Stamford had once again become Mike in John’s mind. He had always been an affable man, easy to get along with and unobtrusive. John found he was just as easy in his presence as he had been staying up all hours and studying their texts before exams. Mike was a soothing presence, but there was something itching at the back of his mind, something that John had come to associate with _lack of Sherlock._ He could feel morose agitation from his mate, but this was different. This was… absence, John supposed, and it wasn’t an absence Sherlock was feeling, it was one all his own. Not as sharp as what had happened when he went to Germany - John hoped they were never that far away from each other again - but noticeable.

His temper wasn’t settled down just yet, and he knew better than to go back before the words he wanted to say to Sherlock were in something other than all caps with exclamation points as the only punctuation when he thought them in his mind.

The feeling of absence was insistent, for a moment, and John barely managed to keep from bolting from the hospital in the direction of the flat. Instead he did the reasonable thing, and pointed out the time, excusing himself from the chat. Mike nodded, and gave John his cell phone number, extracting a promise from him to catch up at a pub soon - “We won’t tell the wife,” Mike said, with a conspiratory wink, “beer’s right out of the diet.” - before they said their goodbyes.

With nothing else to occupy himself, and Mike heading to teach a class, John put his hands in his pockets and headed over to the bank of elevators to make his way outside. He hit the call button, but as the doors opened a flurry of activity, a stretcher with a body and a team working on it came down the hall. John was pushed to the back of the elevator, and he stood quietly in the corner rather than interrupt. He could always just hit his floor button later.

Once the team cleared out he was left in the elevator with a quiet woman who stood in the corner farthest from him and stared resolutely at her paperwork. There was something odd about that, John thought, but let it go. The elevator soon opened up on the basement level, and the woman hurried out, nose kept tucked down to her papers. John watched her turn towards the direction a sign indicated was the mortuary department.

He reached over and hit the button for the main floor, and thought of what he ought to do next.

A surge of _worry_ came over him, and John couldn’t think of anything but Sherlock.

Sherlock didn’t restrain his projected feelings. Whatever was strongest to him, he transmitted, and John had no notion of why that might be. He was intelligent, viciously so, and staggeringly independent.

No matter what he thought, John could not deny his mate an answer.

And then he felt a twinge of guilt.

He hadn’t taken the mobile, because it wasn’t charged. Sherlock had gone to get the charger before Mycroft appeared. And even if he had a phone, he did not know Sherlock’s number. He couldn’t call and reassure his mate.

John concentrated on being reassuring, on _projecting_ that reassurance (at least he hoped that’s what he was doing) and hurried back to Montague street.

The walk was brisk, and John’s stomach complained at him, but rather than stop at a shop for groceries he went straight back to the flat.

He could hear violin music from the hall, and set his shoulders as he headed down to their door. As he passed down the hall, one of the doors was ajar slightly. John frowned, shoulders going tense. The last thing they needed was something _else_ suspicious in their building after the trouble with Milton. He turned to the door, expecting something dangerous, something sinister, something in fatigues and with a scope—

But found it was just a nosy neighbor.

More precisely, the glowering eye and long nose of a nosy neighbor.

“You came out of Holmes’ flat,” the man’s gruff voice huffed into the hallway.

“Yeah,” John replied, feeling defensive.

“Goin’ back in?”

“If I am?”

The man seemed to sneer, but it was hard to tell behind the door. “Get ‘im to cut out the racket. Some of us have bloody jobs to get to.”

And the door slammed.

John snorted, and then looked down the hall. The man had a point, he was just largely irrelevant. What was relevant, the only thing that was relevant, was that Sherlock was playing all his frustration out on the violin.

At full volume.

John could feel the swirl of Sherlock vibrating through him, radiating out with the music. He went down the hall. Sherlock still hadn’t given him keys to the flat. The suspicious part of John’s brain, the part that knew he’d been dragged off by strangers hunting werewolves while he was in a warzone, was starting to suspect there was an ulterior motive to that, as John might be less likely to leave the flat if he couldn’t lock up, and unable to lock up without Sherlock would theoretically mean that he would be most likely to leave the flat with Sherlock… but that was a cracked line of reasoning if he’d ever tried one. Sherlock hadn’t bothered locking the door when John left. Opening the door intensified the sound and the feelings.

_‘I play the violin.’_

That was what Sherlock had said. It was so woefully inadequate for the masterful way he drew sound from the instrument. Sherlock stood in the sitting room with his back to the door, facing the windows. His posture was rigid as his bow jumped furiously back and forth across the strings in quick, short strokes.

Sherlock seemed engulfed in the music.

As John closed the door, the bow caught on a single note, and then Sherlock’s tune changed. The agitated notes notes became longer, more contemplative. Sherlock swayed slightly, body bending and half-turning towards the door.

The line of him was beautiful.

Rather than interrupt, as this had been on the label when he’d made the purchase, John locked the door and headed into the kitchen. He reminded himself that they _still_ had no proper kettle, and set the teapot onto the hob to warm. Sherlock continued playing while John set about making tea - the last of the tea, which was a problem that would have to be sorted in short order, along with the missing kettle - and ignored John when he came in and set the teacup down on the desk beside him.

Sherlock’s jacket was off, and his shirt sleeves were pushed up haphazardly, as though he had been too jittery to roll them. His dark, curly hair was messed, as though his hands had been shoved into it repeatedly. The gesture was something John had not seen Sherlock do first hand, but he could imagine it happening during the conversation with Mycroft.

John set his tea next to Sherlock’s on the desk. Before he could think more about it, he stepped over, moving up behind Sherlock, and took him by the hips.

His mate stiffened, but barely paused his playing.

“Tea,” John said softly, leaning his head against Sherlock’s back.

The music stopped, and Sherlock sighed. “Whatever for.”

Tightening his grip on Sherlock’s hips, John shifted forward until he was against his mate’s back, and then wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s waist.

Sherlock sighed again, “This is insufferable,” he grumbled. He leaned back into John, head tipping back so that he could stare at the ceiling.

“What is?”

“I cannot stand you angry,” Sherlock groused. “It’s… _distracting._ Mycroft seized on that instantly, and I have revealed more to him than I intended.”

“That so?” John asked, splaying his fingers against Sherlock’s waist. He squeezed him gently.

“They are foreign, undoubtedly. Not that it was a hard conclusion to reach, given their equipment and use of technology. Any local organization would be tracked by the packs and prevented from getting this far.”

“You said there were wolves all over the world.”

“There are,” Sherlock affirmed, “but it’s not the sort of setup where there’s perfectly functioning international cooperation. We do have some human attributes.”

“So you think it’s… what, exactly?”

“A foreign-based organization that only does their research away from their native soil. It’s the only explanation that fits.”

“You told Mycroft all of that?” John asked.

“No,” Sherlock replied, straightening up a little. “I told him he could keep chasing his tail looking for leads here, so long as he did it without approaching you.”

“And that spilled the cat out of the bag, did it?”

“It would be enough for me,” Sherlock retorted with a snort.

John chuckled and gave Sherlock’s waist another squeeze. Sherlock shifted, taking bow and violin in the same hand, and covered John’s arms with long fingers. They stood in silence for a moment, John holding on and Sherlock anchoring his arms. John buried his face against Sherlock’s back, pleased at the warm feeling of his mate and the loosening muscles that signaled a lessening of the earlier agitation. He was still mad, they still had things to talk about, but Sherlock went so far off the deep end-

“You don’t even know why I’m mad, do you?” John asked.

“I was not aware this was the behavior of an angry individual.”

“Answer the question.”

“I assume it has to do, yet again, with my drug usage. As Mycroft has indicated that it may not have been as far in the past as you thought it was, you are experiencing a renewed agitation about it.”

“A renewed… yeah. That’s a nice, clinical way to put it.” John squeezed his waist again and drew away, taking up his teacup. “Drink, it’ll get cold.”

Sherlock rolled his shoulders, moving first to put away the violin and the bow. He tucked them reverently into a well-oiled old case, and that was placed on a shelf that had no books on it. Only then did Sherlock scoop up his mug, sipping the tea. “How would you put it, then?”

“You still can’t see a single reason-”

“What Mycroft was referring to was not a _recreational_ usage of the cocaine,” Sherlock said, enunciating each word fully. John paused, and when he remained silent, Sherlock continued. “I mentioned before that I had thought the suffering would be all mine. It was… intolerable, being separated from you. I was irritable-”

There John started to protest, but Sherlock barreled on.

“-I was unstable, but on the third evening of your absence, something happened, and what I normally felt of you vanished,” Sherlock said, staring at the shelf. He ran a finger along the edge of the wood, cleaning off some of the dust there. “It was instinctive, not intentional. The cocaine helps me disconnect.”

John backtracked the gray days of their separation as his mate spoke. He felt nothing but honesty, with a tinge of chagrin along with it. And then John felt it himself.

The third night.

The nightmare, the fight. John had passed out after it, possibly with the aide of pain killers at some point. There had been no IV, but…

“No matter what you and _Mycroft_ think of me,” Sherlock huffed, “I’m not going to relapse.”

John found he did not like being the cause of Sherlock taking drugs. It hadn’t been intentional, of course, but it was still true. As things were, John couldn’t go on being angry about it. He wondered how it had felt, absently. Sherlock transmitted his feelings seemingly all the time that he was aware of them, like a beacon in the darkness. He was present, when they were together, when they were apart, and John’s chest tightened at the thought of Sherlock changing or… or being different.

He liked Sherlock like this.

No, he liked Sherlock _just_ like this. John adored him, actually. John felt connected, felt needed and wanted and so many other things because they poured out of Sherlock like the tall wolf had been waiting years for someone to be there to listen to what he felt. The idea that Sherlock might stop or… or _change_ terrified John as suddenly as the nightmares he’d had in Bratsk. This time he didn’t have to suffer through and hope that morning looked better, though.

The trouble was that knowing he couldn’t go on being angry about it was not the same as actually not being angry about it. Deciding not to be angry was all well and good, except that John’s temper was ticked permanently toward ON when it came to this sort of thing. He couldn’t just shut it off, and for the brain on him, Sherlock just wasn’t getting what John meant about it. They needed a reset.

“Take me to bed,” John said, setting his mug down.

That surprised Sherlock.

“What?” he asked with an arched brow.

John pulled the jumper over his head and tossed it on the back of the couch, away from the blood spots. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, and saw the way Sherlock’s eyes locked on to him undressing. He could feel his mate’s interest.

The attention was slightly intoxicating. He reached up and tugged another button open, just to see Sherlock’s eyes follow his fingers and to feel the rush of want it caused.

That want was dampened, however, by something. John was fairly certain Sherlock’s intellect was out-thinking his wolf. “We are speaking different languages,” John said.

Sherlock’s eyes lifted from where John was starting on his shirt front. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It really isn’t,” John replied. He stopped undressing for a moment, able to draw on the lack of urgency from his mate’s dismissal. “You keep saying that your using the drugs wasn’t an addiction.”

“Because it _wasn’t,”_ Sherlock growled.

“Right, and I can’t… my brain doesn’t get that. All the medical training and all the A&E experience I have says you’re wrong.” Sherlock took a deep breath, but John continued on, quickly, “But all of that also can’t make heads or tails of you being a werewolf either.”

“You propose, then, that you are speaking from a more educated position as a doctor, and that I-”

“No,” John cut him off, aware of where that sentence was going without needing to sense Sherlock’s emotions to sort it out. “I’m saying there’s a gap in my understanding. We know there is. We’ve talked about that.”

Sherlock nodded. “And you propose we remedy this lack of understanding through sex?”

“Never failed us before,” John said. He couldn’t help the chuckle, especially when Sherlock huffed angrily at the notion. “Look, even without the rest of it, I keep thinking ‘what if he died’,” John admitted, reaching up to undo the third button of his shirt front. Sherlock’s eyes fell to it again, watching him, but calculatingly. “And I’ve seen…” John bit back what he wanted to say about the sand and the blood and all the things he couldn’t remember, and instead offered, “Let’s just say I’ve an active imagination. So. Why don’t you remind me that we’re both alive?”

“John,” Sherlock said, wary but still interested. John could feel the draw he had for Sherlock, and the will that kept Sherlock from lunging. “Popular opinion is that solving relationship problems through the repetitive application of sex is-”

“I know that,” John said. “This _isn’t_ that.”

“You propose, then, that sex will solve this dispute for some reason based in personal experience?” Sherlock ground out. “Or are you, conversely, attempting to ignore it all — our disagreement, your siding with my brother, the unbearable malaise I am suffering under your disappointment?”

John withheld the urge to sigh and roll his eyes. He could feel Sherlock trembling, just out of arm’s reach, and he knew that was restraint that had him quivering like that. “Sherlock,” he said.

“What?” Sherlock snapped.

“How do I feel about it?”

Sherlock gaped at him, still wound up from his rebuttal. John waited. Sherlock stared at him.

“What am I feeling _right now,_ Sherlock?”

With an exaggerated roll of his exquisite eyes, Sherlock fixed his attention on John again. Sherlock’s eyes traveled up and down, taking in the whole length of him in a way that made John wonder if he was even paying attention to what he’d been asked. It went on for long enough that John was about to protest when Sherlock spoke.

“Annoyed,” Sherlock said.

“Did you deduce that?” John asked, resisting the urge to huff. Enough of this talking, and even he was starting to second guess his plan.

Sherlock’s eyes met his, narrowed. “You don’t project as much as I do.”

“Obvious,” John replied, meeting his mate’s annoyed look. “But are you even trying?”

Sherlock gave a little snort and closed his eyes. For a moment he seemed to be avoiding it. John could almost imagine the wolf that was Sherlock clinging to his agitation with all his claws, and then it slipped. The look on Sherlock’s face relaxed from the wrinkles of tension bunched around his eyes and mouth, and the pale face of his mate looked the way it had that fateful morning after when he’d asked if Sherlock wanted him.

Just that was enough to obliterate the annoyance, and all the talk fell away and John felt the same need that he had after their argument.

“You… want me.”

“Still a bit obvious, John said, but his words lacked their earlier sarcasm.

Sherlock’s eyes opened, and the look he was giving John was all predator in the best way possible. “This is one of the few instances in which the obvious is…” he started, cutting himself off. Sherlock repeated, “You want me.”

John finished unbuttoning his shirt, feeling his cock stiffen as Sherlock’s eyes raked the length of John again, slow and steady. John had never thought a look could be erotic before he’d mated Sherlock, but there it was, that one right there was just about pornographic. “I want to feel you on every inch of me,” John promised.

Sherlock didn’t say anything in reply. He set the mug down absently, taking a step forward. He lifted a brow questioningly, and John could read the question without hearing it. _Do you mean that?_

“So deep in me I can’t tell where you stop and I start,” John affirmed, undoing his belt.

Sherlock stepped into his personal space, then. Long fingered hands stopped John’s at his belt, and Sherlock knelt in a rush, wrapped an arm around John’s waist and leaned in to press lips against John’s stomach.

“Not here,” John huffed, relaxing as Sherlock’s arms both came up around his waist. “We’ve a perfectly good bed not ten meters to your left.”

*


	13. Chapter 13

Oh, to feel alive.

It was John’s idea to strip off and have at each other, but as happened, Sherlock took over in the follow through. Despite the moon’s distance, John could sense the wolf in his mate as they scrambled into bed together. Insistent, dexterous hands made short work of what was left of John’s clothes, and what Sherlock had been wearing all but evaporated in the midst of kiss and caress between the two of them.

This was an easy conversation spoken by two who knew the words perfectly. John surrendered to his mate’s grip, to his mouth, to his cock when it thrust into him. And as it was, or perhaps because it was the wolf in Sherlock that took him, there was some greater understanding the passed between them.

Just as John had said, the sex drew from him a sense of being alive, of being awake and present in his body that had started to get chased away by the strange routine of London.

This was what John needed.

When Sherlock set to good and proper fucking, the rhythm of the bed against the wall pounded out in explicit terms _just_ how alive they were. John could feel every burst of pleasure just as Sherlock felt it, and as his hands gripped the sheets her could feel the echo of his pleasure in Sherlock. The tempo of it became their hearts racing one another as the shock of pleasure echoed back and forth through them.

If John were capable of thought at that moment, he would have recalled that Sherlock had said the sex would get better. Sherlock had spoken truthfully.

When at last they fell together on the bed, sated and sweating, John turned and pressed himself against Sherlock’s chest, tucking his face against his mate’s neck.

Sherlock was what John needed, more than anything else.

“How was the hospital?” Sherlock asked, voice low and rough as he caught his breath. He looped an arm around John’s back and stroked his spine with one finger.

“Updated,” John mumbled into Sherlock’s neck.

“In the future, take your phone with you,” Sherlock said.

“Sorry about that,” John replied. A stray thought drifted across his mind that Sherlock had not said, _Do not go without me._ John dismissed it with all the higher-level thought of post-coital bliss.

Sherlock made a soft noise, and tightened his grip on John. “I… did not follow you.”

“I noticed.”

“I wanted to,” Sherlock said, voice still low. He turned his head, craned his neck until his voice was very close as he went on. “I can tell where you’ve been, what you’ve done, but it’s not quite the same as seeing it for myself. With anyone else I wouldn’t care, close enough would be fine, but-”

“I’ll introduce you to Mike.”

Sherlock nodded. John worked his arms around Sherlock, reveling in the closeness. He wondered if there was some way to soak in some of Sherlock so he would always be there. Sherlock let out something between a snort and a sigh, and pulled John more fully on top of him. There were too many elbows for a moment, and one too many knees, somehow, but finally they settled in to post-coital bliss.

At least, until Sherlock’s cell phone rang.

John groaned, and made to move.

“Leave it,” Sherlock said, tightening his arms around John.

“What if it’s important?” John asked, shifting enough to look Sherlock in the eye.

“More important than this?” Sherlock asked, arching a brow.

John didn’t have much argument at that, so he chuckled into Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock tugged him back down and stroked his back. Finally, John came up with a retort. “We are witnesses in an open case.”

Sherlock snorted loudly. “Milton is many things, not the least of them a simpleton, but he is not an open case. He was in a brawl outside a bar, likely with his supplier whom he regularly pays inadequately, apparently his usual methods for making up the difference have fallen short. He would not have these problems if he did not put a percentage of his product into himself or others vaguely interested in intercourse with him.”

“And _this_ is who you chose for a dealer?” John grumbled into his neck.

From wherever it was to the side of the bed, Sherlock’s phone beeped and went silent.

“He lacks the ability to outsmart me.”

“So does half the planet,” John replied.

“Most of the planet,” Sherlock corrected.

“Narcissist.”

“You regularly reinforce your positive opinion of me,” Sherlock replied, shifting to kiss his neck.

John groaned in good humor and settled back down against Sherlock. “Think I’ll just…”

“Sleep, John,” Sherlock said, wrapping a protective arm around him and kissing the top of his head.

*


	14. Chapter 14

Hours later, John woke to an insistent pounding on the door. Beneath him, Sherlock seemed to snap awake as well, which meant they both must have been sleeping. It was a novel concept, considering how much sleep Sherlock seemed to avoid on a weekly basis. Maybe, John thought, it was the sex. It had been very good sex, he thought, and he’d certainly been boneless and flat on his back tired afterward.

Or flat on Sherlock’s chest tired, if one wished to be accurate.

“Who is it?” John asked, unable to keep himself from tensing.

Sherlock frowned. He tilted his head and sniffed. “Sergeant Lestrade,” he said, making a curious noise low in his throat. “Shall we let him in?”

Before John could answer, Sherlock had rolled them over and was up and off the bed, stalking towards the door.

For a moment, John just stared at his mate’s bare ass as it disappeared into the sitting room. Then he realized that Sherlock had every intention of answering the door in all six feet of his birthday suit. He thought back to the defiant stance of his mate when addressing the scientists in their private prison, and he wondered if it was a wolf thing to be confrontational like that, or if there was something that he did not know about the his mate’s relationship with the Sergeant.

Through the bedroom door, he heard the front door open, and Sergeant Lestrade’s cut off greeting of, “Evening, Hol- _ly hell!”_

“I am within my own flat,” Sherlock retorted. “If I chose to remain naked, that is my own concern.”

For some reason, that was funny. John didn’t bother withholding his snicker as he got out of bed and scrambled into pants. After a moment of searching he found his dressing gown. He was all thumbs tying it off, but he headed into the sitting room at a quick trot, hoping to keep Sherlock from getting himself arrested for exposure. “Evening, Sergeant. Tea?”

 _“Please,_ Dr. Watson,” Lestrade said, tearing his eyes away from the pale expanse of skin before him.

The sergeant had an odd flush to his cheeks, and that killed any amusement that John felt. It was replaced by a rush of protective jealousy that flared up as he realized that another man was staring at naked Sherlock. Sherlock was _his_ mate. John fought the glare that threatened, but the glare won. Rather than give in to the angry, possessive feeling, he looked for a solution. Sherlock’s dressing gown was on the arm of the couch. John flung it at the back of Sherlock’s head as he passed into the kitchen.

“You haven’t explained _why_ you are here,” Sherlock said, ignoring the robe that had ended up half draped over his shoulder.

Choosing to ignore his mate’s disregard of the clothing, John turned into the kitchen. He put a lid on the possessive feeling and just filled the bloody kettle. He _ignored_ the jealous aftertaste of it and put the kettle on the _fucking_ hob.

Lestrade edged into the room around Sherlock and pushed the door closed behind him. “Put the bloody robe on, you nutter,” he snapped.

Sherlock didn’t bother to answer that. “Focus, Lestrade,” he replied instead. “Why are you here?”

The teapot began to whistle - a watched pot did manage to conform at least when the temperature was high enough - and John took it off the hob. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the conflicted look on the sergeant’s face, as though he was unsure where to look. Sherlock huffed in annoyance and turned to stalk into the kitchen when the man didn’t answer him.

“Not that I’m surprised at anyone staring at you,” John said, filling the teacups he had set out on the counter, “but is he even-?”

“I’m an _exception_ of his,” Sherlock said, putting both long-fingered hands on the back of the chair. He leaned forward, watching John intently.

The only tea left was old and something mint-flavored, but it would do well enough. John had already decided that they would be shopping properly once they got dressed - this stovetop heating was getting old - so it didn’t matter too much.

“A lesser man would take issue with this,” Sherlock added. He tipped his cheek into one hand and arched a brow.

“Are you _trying_ to make me jealous?” John ground out.

“Is it working?” Sherlock asked, lifting a brow at him. One brow turned into two. “You are.” When John gave him an unamused look, Sherlock added, “You’ve nothing to fear.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” John replied. “But before we get into a game of ‘who’s more possessive’, let me ask you. How would you feel if I were the one strutting around naked in front of him?” John replied, watching the tea as it steeped in the cups.

“If you were the one strutting around naked in front of him, I would _blind_ him,” Sherlock said with a vicious little smile.

“Yeah, well. Put the robe on,” John said, “he can still arrest you on some pretense, and I want you back in-”

Sherlock stepped forward, crowding John against the counter. Instinctively, John put his hands around Sherlock’s waist. Sherlock curled down to breathe against his ear, “As you wish, John.”

That wasn’t precisely possessive behavior, but it was… something. Showing off, perhaps. Well, the sergeant had initially considered John a hired personal physician, and that was right off the list after this little display.

Over Sherlock’s bare shoulder, the sergeant was flushed an embarrassed shade of red and was staring determinedly at the floor.

Sherlock grinned at John, all wolf, and leaned back. He stretched out and pulled the robe on, and John turned to make tea. “Hope you like mint, sergeant.”

“It’s fine,” Lestrade replied, sounding more awkward than he looked, if that was possible.

Given that go ahead, John pressed one of the cups into his hand. They stood silently, both of them making similarly uncomfortable faces at the taste and smell of the tea that was somehow _not quite right,_ until Sherlock interrupted.

“You came here for a reason,” Sherlock insisted, arms folded imperiously across his chest. He’d put the robe on, tied it off, but there was enough bare skin to catch (and hold) John’s eye.

The sergeant nodded, grimacing as he swallowed a mouthful of tea, and cleared his throat a little. “I need you both for questioning.”

Sherlock snorted loudly. John stared and tried to form some sort of protest or some sort of question, he wasn’t sure which.

“So, Milton’s gotten himself killed, then?” Sherlock asked.

“And _that_ is why you’re coming to the station for questioning,” the sergeant said, frowning.

John blinked, confused at the entire exchange. They had just been in bed, hadn’t they? And now they were…

Sherlock was protesting loudly, and Sergeant Lestrade was arguing back in as firm, and authoritative a voice as he could manage. He would never match Holmes senior or Elisabeth, and thus was vastly ineffective, but-

Stranger than comparing a police sergeant to his in-laws (was that the right term? John still didn’t know) was that John could _feel_ Sherlock’s _excitement._

John couldn’t understand the reason for it, but somehow John knew that any reasonable argument against going in would go over about as well as tossing an aerosol can on a bonfire to stop it. He sighed heavily and turned back to the bedroom.

Both the arguing voices went silent.

“Dr. Watson?” the sergeant called back to him.

“If you think I’m going to a police station in a dressing gown you’re bonkers.”

*


	15. Chapter 15

It was not Greg that questioned them. Dr. Watson ended up settled opposite a detective that had very little left of whatever human qualities he had once had. Greg was aware of the man, and hated him. There was something hard and cold about the man that just rubbed Greg the wrong way. Yes, the detective was generally dealing with suspects to crimes that shouldn’t draw out the warm and sympathetic in any investigator, but the icy facade didn’t end when the suspects went away, it lurked there, deadening the man’s eyes. Sherlock could consume a small battalion of that type of gruff detective for breakfast. Greg didn’t know about Dr. Watson.

What was worse, that detective’s name was a near permanent black spot in Greg’s memory. He thought he covered it well, but it would out eventually. Probably around some sort of review, at the worst moment possible. Some things were inescapable, though. Greg was starting to get used to that about his life. And Detective Spoon was just one of them.

Dr. Watson, Greg thought, deserved better. It could be reasonably assumed that the doctor was Sherlock’s partner, and that deserved some respect.

Both because anyone who managed to navigate a relationship with Sherlock for any extended period of time deserved an award and because it took courage to have such an extraordinary partner.

What Greg knew about Dr. Watson, beyond that, was very little, but the man seemed steady. Perhaps a little overwhelmed by his circumstances, but certainly not a threat of any kind. He didn’t deserve the sour, heartless detective that was questioning him. He deserved better.

Instead, Dr. Watson was questioned for nearly an hour regarding his identity, his whereabouts for the past twelve hours, and his occupation.

Apparently being a ‘veteran’ wasn’t much of an occupation, at least as far as Detective Spoon was concerned, and what it was of one came without much to recommend it.

Sometimes Greg hated the system that he worked in.

Sherlock was questioned separately.

Without the imperious man to butt in and defend Dr. Watson, Greg felt obliged to at least keep an ear on the goings on of his interrogation. He had, afterall, gotten the good doctor into this mess.

Well, no, Milton had gotten the good doctor into this mess, and being a doctor was what had gotten Watson involved with Milton.

Well.

Being a doctor and being with Sherlock.

“Listen here, Watson,” Detective Spoon grumbled, “I want to know where you were last night.”

“And I told you, Detective,” Dr. Watson replied, “yesterday afternoon I went for a walk. I met with an old friend, Mike Stamford, who works at Bart’s. He gave me a tour of the place, and then I went home.”

“To…” undoubtedly the pause was Detective Spoon shuffling through papers in an attempt to look like he had some sort of evidence. Greg hated that tactic, and the man used it ad nauseum. “… Montague Street? Number Nineteen.”

“Yes.”

“See I checked about that, the landlord hasn’t heard of you.”

“I only got back a few weeks ago.”

“Got back? Got back _from where,_  Watson?”

There was a pause, possibly a sigh, something too soft to hear through the door. “From Germany.”

“And what was in Germany?”

“Hohne Station.”

“What were you doing there, Watson?”

“Getting fucking discharged,” came the clipped reply. Greg winced.

“No need to take that tone.”

“If I’d known I needed them, I would have brought my discharge papers.”

“Kicked out of the army then, were you? Obviously not your cup of tea, Wats-”

“You can either call me Captain or you can call me Doctor.”

The words came out sharply, even through the door. Greg winced. Detective Spoon wasn’t the sort that it was good to raise your voice at, even if you had a point.

“If you’re not in the army anymore, Wats-”

“I gave you a choice.”

“If you’re not in the army anymore, _Doctor,_ then there’s no reason to call you Captain, is there?”

There was no reply.

“So the landlord hasn’t heard of you. What, exactly, are you doing there?”

“I stay with Sherlock.”

“Sherlock-” another of those annoying pauses, more paper shuffling, and then, “Sherlock Holmes?”

“As he’s the other person you’re questioning needlessly, yes, Sherlock Holmes.”

“Let’s just talk about Sherlock, then, shall we? How does a jobless bloke like him afford Montague Street, anyway?”

“You’re a detective, and you can’t figure a posh toff when you see one?”

There was silence for a moment, obviously Detective Spoon didn’t like having that obvious fact pointed out to him by the person he was interrogating. Then, “Is there anyone that can verify the two of you were in the flat last night?”

“One of the neighbors,” came the easy reply, “stopped me to complain about the violin music.”

“Which neighbor?”

“Well I didn’t stop to ask for names,” Dr. Watson said, “at the time I thought I’d just go back to the flat and see about it.”

And on it went, like that. Greg stayed propped up against the wall by the door while Detective Spoon worked out his frustrations on the seemingly unflappable Dr. Watson, ignoring the paperwork he wasn’t getting done to stand there. Someone needed to, he thought, and he was the only man for the job. Once it sounded like things were wrapping up, Greg retreated so that Detective Spoon wouldn’t have a reason to confront him about anything.

Finished with his questions, Dr. Watson was released. He looked like he had a headache, at least to Greg, a sight worse than the harassed look he’d been wearing when Sherlock pulled that stunt this morning with the nudity.

Greg positioned himself down the hall from where Dr. Watson had been questioned. As a sort of a peace offering, he had snagged two steaming cups of coffee.

The lighting in the hall was different from that in the interrogation room, and Dr. Watson blinked, bleary eyed, as he looked around. He certainly saw Greg where he was standing, but it was almost like he didn’t really see him. For a moment it appeared that Dr. Watson wasn’t sure what to make of his surroundings. He looked… lost somehow. It was strange to see the man look that way, especially after Greg’s first impression of him. Dr. Watson had seemed nothing but competent and in charge with the injured person in the flat. This Dr. Watson was a big change from that one. The impression lasted only a moment, and the second pass of his eyes around the station was more aware. He definitely saw Greg that time, but gave a bit of a huff instead of approaching. Instead, Dr. Watson tried to ask one of the officers in the hall a question, but got a gruff brush off. Then he seemed to sigh and turned and headed in Greg’s direction.

“Coffee? Station tea is… you don’t want it, trust me.”

“Ta,” Dr. Watson said, taking the cup from him. It was black, but it was hot.

“There’s milk and sugar,” Greg said, motioning over his shoulder down the hallway. “I just didn’t know if you took it.”

Dr. Watson nodded. Greg turned back for the break room, and the other man followed.

“You’re being friendly,” Watson said.

“You didn’t kill Milton,” Greg said, opening the fridge and holding up the container of milk.

“Oh?”

“No,” Greg said. For a moment, the room around them went away and he was back in that damp alley. Milton was strung up by his wrists, dripping blood from - Greg shook his head to clear it, and affirmed, “That wasn’t you, Dr. Watson.”

Watson took the container and poured enough into his coffee to suit his taste. “Grisly?”

Greg pressed his lips together. He had a strong stomach, but that scene had managed to unsettle him. He wouldn’t dwell on it now. “You seem to be trying to keep Sherlock from getting arrested.”

“Yeah,” Watson replied, warily.

“Good on you,” Greg said. “But he’ll probably get himself held overnight. Sherlock has a habit of mouthing off at inappropriate times at inappropriate people.”

Watson snorted out a laugh.

“What I mean is, you might be more comfortable going back to the flat.”

“If it’s all the same, I’ll wait,” Watson said. He poked his head back out into the hall and looked up and down it. “Is there a lobby or… a waiting area?”

Greg checked his watch. It was still early afternoon. Abbey wouldn’t be cursing his name just yet, and they could still catch the train later. It felt _wrong_  to leave Dr. Watson to wait alone for Sherlock, and he _did_  have paperwork to do.

“Awful chairs, worse coffee,” Greg said. “Come with me.”

*


	16. Chapter 16

John didn’t know which detective had been interviewing Sherlock, but he was pretty sure that Sherlock was either being left alone to consider his attitude or was more officially cooling his heels in a cell somewhere. In the meantime, John and the sergeant - _Lestrade, please, Dr. Watson_ \- had gone through two cups of coffee and some biscuits. The caffeine and food were enough to make up for that morning, at least in John’s mind. Lestrade insisted he didn’t mind waiting, and John wondered what sort of a connection he had to Sherlock. John felt a jealous surge at the thought of the man with his hands on his mate, but something seemed false about that idea.

The time of separation - and isn’t it melodramatic to think of it like that, John - dragged on and John began to get the antsy feeling that he’d been warned about on their most recent visit out to Wiltshire. The same one he’d felt the day before when his anger wore off in that elevator in Bart’s. It was pathetic, really, as he was the one that was telling Sherlock he’d have to work on his proximity dependency. His thoughts began to chase themselves around his head, circling back around to the foreign concept of _Lestrade and Sherlock._

“Married,” John said, hours later as he slumped in the chair by Sergeant Lestrade’s desk. It was a triumphant sort of revelation, one that took a bit of the sting out of that whole ‘exception’ business that Sherlock had mentioned, and softened the sergeant to John’s tastes.

The man was checking his watch frequently, though he was diligently working through a stack of paperwork. He glanced questioningly up at John when he said that.

John pointed to the ring on the sergeant’s finger. “You. Married. How long?”

“Three years,” the sergeant replied. He fumbled with his desk drawer and took a framed photo out, offering it to John.

“What’s her name?”

“Abigail,” the sergeant said. He cleared his throat, glancing at John awkwardly for a moment before going back to his papers. “She’s…”

“Is she an ‘Abigail’ or an ‘Abbey’?” John asked.

“Abbey,” the sergeant replied, almost absently. Then he looked back up at John. “What do you mean?”

“In my experience, the Abbeys are preferable,” John said, closing his eyes.

“To the Abigails?”

“Mmm,” John agreed. “More fun.”

“Known a few in your time?”

“You make me sound old when you put it that way,” John said.

Lestrade chuckled at that.

“You keep checking your watch,” John said. “Do you need to go?”

There was a noise behind them, and John didn’t have to look back to know that Sherlock had sauntered into the room. He could feel the radiating anticipation of his mate as he drew near. John didn’t know what Sherlock was so excited about, but he felt an answering rush of relief in himself just from the renewed proximity. “What he has failed to mention is that he and his charming wife were supposed to go away this weekend,” Sherlock announced.

John checked his own watch and winced at the time. It was already half-seven.

“I’ve been doing my job,” Lestrade replied, standing up and stretching.

“Ahh, yes, of course, two hours after everyone else from your shift headed off home, and you’re still at work. Never mind the train receipts on the corner of your desk,” Sherlock said, stopping beside John’s chair with a hand out. “Come along, John.”

John didn’t want to hold Sherlock’s hand. More precisely he didn’t want to _just_ hold Sherlock’s hand. He wanted to climb into him, or, alternatively, onto him so he could be carried home.

That was an utterly ridiculous thought.

He settled for the hand up, and enjoyed the way Sherlock’s hand found his shoulder.

“Tomorrow,” Sherlock said, steering John towards the door.

“What do you mean, ‘tomorrow?’” Lestrade asked.

“She’s going to throw a fit at you, and won’t be home when you get in,” Sherlock said. “She’s at a sibling’s house, or, more likely, she’s been pulled.”

John protested that statement. Despite whatever annoyed, jealous reactions he had to the sergeant, the man hadn’t done anything overly wrong or threatening, and that… that was a bit much. Lestrade made an angry noise. Sherlock gave John’s shoulder a firm push through the door, and called behind them, “I’ll solve the murder for you at two.”

They were through the doors before Lestrade had any chance to reply, and they were in the lift before John’s brain caught up with the tail end of the conversation. “What do you mean you’ll solve the murder tomorrow?”

“Precisely as I said,” Sherlock said with grin.

“How?”

“We’ll take a look at the scene,” Sherlock said. “Detective Jones was most helpful by supplying me with photographs of the scene. It can only be one in one of two places. The brickwork was distinctive.”

John leaned against the wall of the elevator, too tired to argue. “Groceries,” he said. “And a kettle.”

It was Sherlock’s turn to blink.

“And tea. We’re out and I’m not drinking that mint concoction.”

“It was for an experiment,” Sherlock said defensively.

“It’s gone off. I didn’t know that tea bags _went off,”_ John replied.

Sherlock snorted.

“We’ll go try to not get arrested looking at the scene, but we’re doing the shopping.”

 

*


	17. Chapter 17

The pair of them went to the scene early the next morning well before the traffic in the area had picked up, though how Sherlock had known the traffic patterns in the area was beyond John’s reckoning. The scene was removed from view, down a stretch of road that had some old plant or warehouse on it, and behind an office that looked like it got little traffic from time to time. John reckoned there were probably some very bored workers that went in and out of it, and hoped (even though he knew better) that however Milton had looked when he was found wasn’t the sort of thing that would traumatize some poor old office lady.

 

They came by cab, and the cabby gave them a look that clearly said, _You two blokes are barmy,_ when he was paid and told to leave them behind.

 

John wasn’t sure that he wasn’t correct.

 

Sherlock led the way around the buildings and back into the little alley, coat flapping with the agitated speed of his movements. John’s mate sniffed at the alleyway from one end to the other. There was what looked like dried blood all over the place, but some of it was faded, and John wondered if he’d missed a storm in the last few days. He certainly hadn’t been paying much attention to the weather.

 

Just as John was getting to wonder about how they’d get back to civilization enough to get to the store, Sherlock was moving again. He stalked back across the cobbled space and declared that the trash had been collected since the murder.

 

“How do you know that?”

 

“Please,” Sherlock snorted, offering no explanation. Instead he tilted his head, looking back and forth along the walls around the dumpster. “He was hung here,” Sherlock said, gesturing to the front of the dumpster. “See that smudge? It’s blood, but there’s something else in it. Likely they haven’t tested it properly, but from the look of the scene they haven’t tested any of it properly. John, have you anything to take a sample?”

 

“A sample?”

 

“For testing,” Sherlock said. “If I can isolate whatever has been mixed with this, then I can determine the place that Milton was actually murdered.”

 

“You don’t think it was here?” John asked, ignoring the glaring question of where exactly Sherlock intended to test the samples. It explained all the glassware in the kitchen, and a few of the contents of the cabinets.

 

“Of course not,” Sherlock replied.

 

He stood up from where he was bent inspecting the asphalt and clambered neatly into the skip.

 

“Sherlock?”

 

“Keep an eye out, would you John? I doubt you’d like to end up in the back of a patrol car, seeing as to how we’ve just gotten free of the onus of questioning from yesterday.”

 

Whatever Sherlock wanted with the skip, considering it contained ‘fresh’ rubbish instead of potentially clue-bearing rubbish, John couldn’t argue with that reminder. He moved over to the corner of the building and kept a weather eye out for any cars that might come along down the mostly empty street and question their… activities. Once again, and John was starting to think this was a thing to do with Milton in general, they were in danger of crossing the police.

 

Sherlock hopped neatly out of the skip, not too dirty looking but smelling distinctly of rot from whatever he’d been rooting through. Even John could smell that from several feet away. It was always curious to him how the distinct rancid decay scent of bins and skips managed to adhere to anything and everything that got near it.

 

Casting a critical eye on the brick and the cobbles, Sherlock declared loudly, “There’s not enough blood.”

 

“How do you mean?” John asked, glancing back at the little alley. There was something there that Sherlock could see that he couldn’t.

 

“Milton’s body was completely exsanguinated. The photos made that clear to me, but this-” Sherlock extended a hand towards the blood stains on the brick wall, “this can’t be five litres. The area has been largely free of rainfall in the past days, less a light shower last evening. Not hard enough to wash away _all_ of the evidence, though it did gall me to be trapped in a useless interrogation while the weather got to the crime scene. Still. Even if some of it washed off, there’s just not enough of it here. And the skip, despite its other questionable contents, is free of blood residue.”

 

From the splashes on the brick and the marking on the concrete, John had to agree with him, but without a good look at the body or photos of the scene undisturbed he couldn’t offer any other comment.

 

His silence spurned Sherlock onward. “The police must be particularly incompetent this time, though considering the ham-fisted detective who interrogated me, I’m not surprised.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

His mate made a broad gesture to the side of the alley with all of the blood in it. “If Milton were murdered here, the blood would be centered on the location of the body, rather than slopped across the brick and stucco across from it. There’s only so much blood in a human sized body, and the pressure required to spray it that far would be gone from cutting at veins before all this mess happened. If it were a blunt object being used to excess, it would be a different story, but the photographs showed _cuts._ ”

 

John came back towards the area where Sherlock was gesturing at in agitation. He thought back to what he knew of field surgery, and the considerations of what the force of a cut might do to the spray, and concluded Sherlock was correct. His assessment didn’t slow down his mate’s explanation.

 

“Also, the blood would have painted the skip, enough to have had forensics confiscate it. As it remains, logically the only blood present is what was on it at the scene less the amount that washed off in the light rain from last night. Therefore, while the body was placed here, staged by some party or-” he tipped his head, regarding the blood splattered on the brick, “more likely _parties_ , he did not pass from man to corpse in this location.”

 

John was following along with the details, and though they were correct, once pointed out, he would not have pieced them together so seamlessly or quickly. “Brilliant,” he said, awed by the speed of it all.

 

Sherlock blinked at him, and then a broad smile spread across his lips. “You do realize you said that out loud?”

 

“Still true, even if I did,” John replied. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

 

With a bit of a smirk, Sherlock regarded John. “What do you think?” Sherlock took a step closer to John, coming close enough that John could smell the stink of the skip on him and feel the warmth of his mate’s body. “How did you say it the other night?”

 

The usual attraction Sherlock felt for him was, surprisingly, undiminished by the smell, and the closer Sherlock got the less it mattered. There were more important things than scents, just then. Sherlock stepped right up to him, so close that their bodies brushed together.

 

“How do I _feel?_ _”_ Sherlock purred out, leaning down to breathe the word into his ear.

 

John didn’t even need to close his eyes and focus on it. The words tumbled out of his mouth as though he’d been ordered. “Turned on.”

 

“Which suggests-?”

 

“That you don’t mind.”

 

Sherlock kissed him, then, right in the middle of the crime scene. It was hot, and John surrendered to it willingly. Sherlock’s interest was infectious. John did, however, manage to keep from getting an erection in the middle of it all, but it was a near thing. Sherlock pressed their foreheads together and closed his eyes for a moment. “Correct,” he said, still grinning.

 

“You smell like that skip,” John said, wrinkling his nose.

 

“I hardly expected _you_ to be so squeamish,” Sherlock replied, brushing their noses together. “I have the greater olfactory concern in this instance.”

 

They both chuckled at that, and Sherlock kissed him again in a just-because-I-can sort of way before releasing him. John found his footing and adjusted the fall of his jacket with a little tug, reminding himself sternly that getting off at a murder scene was just not on.

 

Sherlock brushed off the worst of what had come with him from the skip, took a few photos with his mobile and then they left.


	18. Chapter 18

It turned out that John did the shopping.

 

Sherlock followed along to the Tesco’s, and then balked at the door, as though there was something offensive inside. Honestly after that dive in the skip it was Sherlock who was the offensive thing. John wasn’t sure how he was managing not to strip at the offense to his nostrils. After five minutes of standing together, John sent him off home. When Sherlock tensed, John fished the charged cell phone out of his pocket and waggled it at him. “Half an hour,” he said. “Can we manage it?”

 

Sherlock departed with an annoyed nod, and John was left with the task of the shopping.

 

“Probably ought to get used to this,” John said, mostly to himself, though he drew the eyes of an OAP sorting through the canned goods. “Doubt he’s much of one for shopping.”

 

The woman tucked herself more firmly into her coat, and John gathered up the essentials - bread, milk, some cheese, sausage, a small variety of vegetables, _proper tea_ in two varieties - as Sherlock had not yet stated a preference for a particular blend or kind - and a kettle. He wasn’t too worried about the sturdiness of it, something told him that nothing would last long in their kitchen.

 

He checked out - surprising how the machine didn’t seem to show a balance on his account, though it had been low last he’d known - and was out of the store in a quarter hour. He headed for the flat, carrying the bags in one hand so that he could fish his phone out and call Sherlock.

 

The body that slammed into him was unexpected, but John had been distracted. John went staggering in the direction he was all-but-tackled, and didn’t catch his footing until he was in another alley.

 

Something told John that he was going to start hating alleys.

 

The blow came from behind, something solid square across the shoulders that had his whole spine tingling. His fingers spasmed, and the bags dropped to the ground. It was the shock rather than the pain of it that did it, but the blow threw him forward into whoever it was - male, by the bulk of him - that had knocked him into the alley.

 

The cell phone fumbled its way out of John’s grip from his pocket and clattered off to the side.

 

A rough grip on the front of his jacket caught him, and John was turned sharply by the man he’d run into. John briefly caught a glimpse of a second man standing behind the other one, with an awful looking pipe in one hand, before he was slammed face-first into the wall.

 

“Now I has to ask myself what a posh-dressed nobody like you was up to so early this morning,” the man at John’s back gruffed out right into his ear. He was barely John’s height, but had a heavy grip. “Especially in a neighborhood like this’n.”

 

The last lips to brush his skin were Sherlock’s. The last scent of anyone in his nostrils was his mate and this man, in comparison, was a garbage heap worse than the one Sherlock had smelled like after that dumpster.

 

What rushed through John’s system - entirely his own feelings, not nearly vibrant enough to be Sherlock’s - was adrenaline.

 

Not fear.

 

Wasn’t that odd.

 

“What’s it to you where I’ve been this morning,” John replied. “Unless you’re in need of a kettle?”

 

The garbage heap of a man huffed out a chuckle. “Looks like we’ve got a stand-up act h-”

 

His words cut off as John snapped his head back into the cheek turned towards him. It was enough to send garbage heap off-balance so that John could shove him aside. The second man with the pipe took a swing that John ducked. The swing followed through into garbage heap, and the blow struck the man in the head.

 

Down went garbage heap.

 

A second swing of the pipe was ducked, but John knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. Even a very stupid fighter would stop aiming for the head soon enough. He had to think. Think, dammit!

 

A third swing, lower this time, aimed at John’s shoulder. John sidestepped, and the pipe slammed into the skip. His attacker was just enough surprised by that for John to shove _him_ into the skip bodily. The pipe went to the ground, clattering away, and it left both John and his attacker weaponless except for their fists.

 

A surge of surprise and alarm exploded at the base of his skull, and John knew that Sherlock had finally noticed what was going on.

 

John was blinded by the intensity of his mate as the transmitted feeling shifted to indignant rage.

 

The first blow of retaliation landed, and John’s jaw hurt terribly, but there was no crack of breaking bone. John could feel the fist connect with his face, but the experience of it was muffled, drown out by Sherlock.

 

John staggered as the second blow connected, putting him off balance.

 

Then, as the third blow struck him, like a light switch, Sherlock’s rage _shut off_.

 

The sharp, unfiltered sting of the blow drew John to instant attention. That was a very good thing, because when he was paying attention, he at least stood a chance of not needing reconstructive surgery at the end of this. John was even a bit of a boxer, though this wasn’t the same. There was a measured sort of back and forth of what would belong in a ring, but this was a street fight. What did John a better turn was that he had a better awareness of his surroundings than the pipe-wielder. As they traded swings, John managed to back him across the fallen bag with the kettle in its box.

 

Down went the pipe-wielder.

 

Despite the lack of emotion being pumped his way, John could feel Sherlock’s approach like a steady beat in the back of his head, even as he dropped down onto the pipe-wielder’s chest and knocked him out good and proper.

 

It was only a little while later that he heard the rushing footsteps of his mate making his way into the alley to find him.

 

He must, he thought, be quite a sight. Sherlock wasn’t winded, but his chest was heaving for breath as he came into the alley at only a bit less than a dead sprint, demanding loudly, “John!”

 

Sitting back, John scowled. Not only did the pipe-wielder trip over the kettle, he smashed straight into it. The thing was ruined.

 

“We should leave,” John said as Sherlock snatched him up off the pipe-wielder with a strong grip.

 

“Can’t,” Sherlock said, curling down around him. Long-fingered hands groped at John to check for injuries.

 

“I have legs. You have legs.”

 

“The police have cars.”

 

“Bloody buggering fuck.”

 

*


	19. Chapter 19

“Would you care to explain to me, _Doctor_ , how you came to be accosted by the two men in that alley?”

 

“Pipe to the shoulders,” Watson replied. “I bet the bruise is set in if you want to see.”

 

Sherlock made a growling noise from beyond them, and Greg shook his head. “I’m sure the EMT took a look at it for the file,” he said.

 

Watson seemed untroubled by the altercation, though he seemed to lament the smashed bags that were being poked at by a uniformed officer. He kept glancing that way with an expression between hope and regret. Greg ignored it as best he could, still surprised that he was once more with Sherlock and his Watson fellow. Watson still seemed nice, but there was something more there. There had to be, if he’d turned the two punks into moaning sacks of bruises.

 

Truthfully, Sherlock seemed the most upset of all of them, arms folded in a way that puffed up his ridiculously posh coat. According to the witness who had called in to the Met, Watson had been alone in the fight, but somehow Sherlock had arrived before the squad cars. When asked about the scuffle, all Sherlock answered with was a thunderous expression.

 

Greg flipped a page in his notebook with a sigh.

 

“It’s their own fault for attempting to assault _a veteran_ ,” Sherlock snapped. “What purpose do these questions of yours _serve, Sergeant?_ _”_

 

Watson turned, calmly, and said, “Sherlock.”

 

Sherlock scowled, but his mouth snapped shut at the quiet request of the good doctor. Greg did his best not to stare, but couldn’t help wishing he could quiet the abrasive ex-addict similarly. Sherlock must have read that on his face, because he sneered at him and turned moodily away, crouching down to scan the pavement.

 

Watson turned back to Greg and went on as though Sherlock hadn’t just thrown a two-year-old’s hissy fit. “I’m not sure what singled me out, Sergeant,” he said, and appeared to be saying honestly, though the more familiar ‘Lestrade’ was gone in favor of his rank again. “I’ve never seen them before and I’m not in the habit of picking fights. Not while I’m sober, at least.”

 

From where he was crouched, Sherlock jerked his head up and turned to look at Watson as though he hadn’t heard that particular tidbit about the man before.

 

“And you can’t think of anything-”

 

Sherlock turned his attention hastily back to the pavement, bending further in the manner of some figure that Greg had only ever seen in origami to reach under the dumpster without laying on the stained tarmac of the alley. When he unfolded it appeared that Sherlock had fished out a scratched mobile.

 

“Just some line about me being somewhere I don’t belong,” Watson said, shrugging.

 

It was too late for the brush off, though. Greg recalled Sherlock’s strutting declaration about the crime scene from the night before. “Sherlock, have you been poking your nose in crime scenes again?”

 

“I was the one attacked,” Watson said.

 

“You don’t seem the sort to hit up crime scenes in alleys by your lonesome, Doctor, if you’ll forgive the presumption.”

 

“He is also not the sort to vivisect someone and then hang them by their extremities,” Sherlock said crisply. He brushed off the mobile and inspected it before handing it back to Watson.

 

“When you put it that way, it sounds like you are,” Greg said with a groan.

 

“Don’t be tedious,” Sherlock replied.

 

Greg couldn’t help but think that Sherlock’s response wasn’t the same as a denial.

 

Watson groaned, rubbing his face with a dirty hand, and Sherlock’s attention shifted to him.

 

“Doctor Watson?” Greg asked. “Are you alright?”

 

“Fine,” Watson replied, huffing out what was probably a sigh.

 

“What is it?”

 

“The kettle,” Watson groaned.

 

Greg turned and found that the uniformed officer had emptied one of the bags, and a stomped on box looked to be the remains of a newly purchased kettle. He lifted a brow as he looked between the kettle and Watson, but the man just groaned and shook his head.

 

“If that will be all,” Sherlock prompted, brushing the phone off and securing it in a pocket.

 

“I’m not sure it is,” Greg replied.

 

The thunderous expression returned, fixing on Greg like a predator latching onto prey. “As John has been assaulted, and there is no reason to question the victim more thoroughly beyond the basic questions that you have already asked, I fail to see what further use you have for him other than to make the preposterous suggestion that he go to the A&E, which he will not be doing as he is a medical professional on his own and-”

 

“Sherlock,” Watson said again.

 

Sherlock cut himself short, turning his attention to Watson, and closed his mouth.

 

That was impressive no matter how many times Greg saw it in action. When Sherlock was on a rant, he spoke in a single unending sentence so filled with logic it was like an assault with a physical weapon rather than just words.

 

“Doctor Watson, would you like to go to the A&E?” Greg asked anyway, not about to start a precedent of letting Sherlock answer questions about Watson’s wishes any more than he expected Watson to answer Sherlock’s.

 

For a minute, Watson was silent, looking again at the smashed box of the kettle as though it might somehow make his decision for him. Sherlock made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a whine, and Watson lifted his eyes to the thin man. Only then did he say, “I’d like to go home, thanks.”

 

“If you’re sure,” Greg said, aware that whatever had just passed between the two of them might be coercion, in some light.

 

“He’s said it,” Sherlock huffed, “that ought to mean that he’s sure about it.”

 

“He took at least a few blows _to the head_ , Sherlock!” Greg snapped. “Anyone can be uncertain after a thing like that happens.”

 

In defense of the _impossible_ man, Sherlock looked chastised by that.

 

Greg excused himself to check in with the EMT that Doctor Watson was, indeed, clear to go home. Sherlock waited, almost patiently, hovering around Watson like a honeybee to a flower.

 

“How’s it look?” he asked.

 

“That Watson fellow is either extraordinarily lucky, or fairly good at handling himself in a fight,” the technician said. “Look, here,” the woman said, turning the tablet she was working on for Greg to see.

 

She had taken a photo of Doctor Watson’s bruising, and it looked ugly. “What’s this here?” Greg asked, pointing at some strange markings on the Doctor’s shoulder.

 

The technician turned the tablet back to herself to take a look. “Scarring, looks like, not from this.”

 

“Then how do you mean?”

 

“Most men ambushed in an alley by two blokes with a pipe come out strapped to a stretcher… if they don’t go out in a body bag.”

 

Greg didn’t point out how obvious that was, instead he waited with a lifted brow for the technician.

 

“Well, he doesn’t look particularly fit to me,” she said defensively, waving Greg away. “It’ll all be in the report, Sergeant.”

 

Something about this felt wrong, but there wasn’t really anything he had that he could hold the good doctor on. He turned back to where Doctor Watson sat waiting beside Sherlock. Something on his face must have given him away, because Sherlock drew Watson to his feet and announced, loudly, “Come along, John, the Sergeant is finished bothering you for the day.”

 

A part of Greg wondered what had given him away, but more than that he was oddly certain this wouldn’t be the last time he was questioning the two of them about this.

 

And Sherlock still hadn’t managed to ‘solve’ the bit about the dead drug dealer.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draft version now at 38K. I didn't realize I was writing a book series. ^_^;


	20. Chapter 20

In the end, Sherlock had out-logicked the sergeant on whether or not they needed to be taken down to the station (again) to be questioned about going to a crime scene. John was surprised, but Sherlock was right. The alley wasn’t taped off, they hadn’t done anything wrong - despite the questionable dive Sherlock had taken into the skip there wasn’t anything illegal about rummaging through a bin - and they’d _already_ been questioned about what had happened there.

 

Asking the same questions again a day later wasn’t worth anyone’s time.

 

Almost before they were officially released by the sergeant, Sherlock hustled John away from the alley. Bullied, really.

 

Maybe herded.

 

A cab reluctantly took them back to Montague street, convinced by a flash of bills in Sherlock’s hand at the first sign of complaint that a little smell was nothing to worry about.

 

They alighted the cab at the flat.

 

Then John was hustled out onto the concrete and into the building, up the stairs, through the doors and into the flat.

 

Then John was bustled straight out of his clothes.

 

John didn’t precisely mind, being stripped by his mate was always an intriguing start to the evening, but it became quickly obvious that Sherlock wasn’t after any sort of sexy interlude.

 

John’s mate plucked the clothes off of him with careful fingers and stowed them in plastic bags that looked surprisingly like those the police collected evidence in. Then, when John was down to his pants in the middle of their poor living room that sported only the one arm chair, the bloody couch and the disorganized tumult of Sherlock’s filing system, John was left standing in the chill of the room.

 

That was another tick against whatever Sherlock was up to.

 

John had grown rather unaccustomed to being naked without the warmth of his mate against him.

 

“Sherlock-?” John started, but found he was unsure what it was that he wanted to ask, precisely. Before the thoughts could come to him, he found himself distracted by further antics of his mate.

 

Sherlock took John’s arm carefully by the wrist and lifted it. He closed his eyes as he brought John’s hand up. For a moment, John thought Sherlock was indulging in some strange sex act he hadn’t come across before, but what he _felt_ from Sherlock was completely devoid of any arousal. His mate’s touch was almost clinical. There was still a great intensity, a focus like John had never come across before, but all Sherlock did was… inspect him.

 

John was treated to a thorough once over. His wrists, his knuckles, his arms, his face and hair - Sherlock kept his eyes closed and seemed to be scenting him. Sherlock arranged him with sharp, none-too-gentle tugs into whatever position or angle he was needed for proper going over. He did all of this from behind closed lids, as though he had some greater vision without his eyes. Sherlock’s long fingers were detached, and if touch could be considered stern then John’s mate was worse than any old schoolmaster.

 

The examination - John thought _that_ was the proper word for it - put a firm distance between them.

 

It was only when John shied away from the blind inspection of his back that Sherlock’s eyes snapped open again, staring at him accusingly.

 

“Sorry,” John said, setting his shoulders with a little wince.

 

Sherlock’s expression changed instantly.

 

“John,” Sherlock said, a worried whine taking over his usual deep voice.

 

Strong hands went gentle, and John found himself guided in turning around. Just as they had after Germany, fingers and hands marked off the strikes that had caused each of the bruises. A punch here and Sherlock’s flat knuckles rested gently. The glancing blow to his ribs - Sherlock’s palm flat against his skin. Once each blow had been cataloged, Sherlock wrapped long arms gently around him and kissed his neck.

 

“Paracetemol and bed rest,” John said softly.

 

Sherlock guided John into the bedroom.

 

“I’d rather a glass of-” John began, only to find his speech cut short as Sherlock sank to his knees at John’s feet and tugged his pants down. “Sherlock?”

 

“Don’t have any,” Sherlock said, kissing John’s stomach. “This will have to do.”

 

‘This’ was a blow job that would have put John on his knees if Sherlock hadn’t wrapped arms around his waist and held him up. _This_ left John boneless and pliant afterward when Sherlock arranged the two of them in bed. _This_ knocked John out quite thoroughly after the day he had, with barely enough energy to murmur to Sherlock, “Kettle,” before the darkness of sleep took him.

 

*


	21. Chapter 21

Even that rather astonishing orgasm was not enough to force John’s dreams into peacefulness.

 

_John finds himself in the over-sized house with it_ _’s long, long hallway._

_He turns, heading towards the kitchen. He knows he has to get to the kitchen, and if he can just get there in time, everything will be alright._

_The hall before him stretches away, and then the walls stretch upwards and the dusty corners are mountains and the curtains that hang off the windows look like hideous gray slopes, the dust tumbles down like powder on a ski run._

_It_ _’s too big and too far to walk._

_John runs, but doesn_ _’t get anywhere._

_He runs harder, faster, until every step John takes in the hall echoes like a gunshot, like artillery fire, like an explosion. The sound is so loud, blaring, that John stops, falling to his knees-_

The bed beneath John jostled slightly as Sherlock slapped a cell phone from the table by the bed, scattering papers as well.

 

A long pale arm yanked the sheet up over both their heads, and for a moment John’s head felt the wrong size for what’s inside it. Then he shifted and his body reminded him he’d been smacked about by a pipe the day before.

 

John groaned.

 

A warm hand found it’s way down and long fingers wrapped around John’s-

 

“You can’t keep giving me an orgasm every time I’m in pain,” John groaned.

 

Sherlock’s lips found the soft skin behind John’s ear and he all but purred, “I disagree.”

 

“Paracetemol,” John replied, nonetheless shifting to let Sherlock’s long fingers curl around the length of his half-interested cock.

 

“In the interest of expedience,” Sherlock said, settling close up against John’s back, fitting them together as he stroked the hardening length of John, “I’ll explain why.”

 

John shifted back, glad of the warmth against him, and the arms around him. His body was interested in what Sherlock was up to, and he could barely keep his eyes open as his mate’s clever hands glided along the hardness of him.

 

“They don’t work,” Sherlock whispered in his ear, as though it were some greater confidence. “Not strong enough. My body burns it off faster than caffeine.”

 

“Sh-Sherlo-” John moaned softly, hips chasing Sherlock’s hand. He was starting to lose track of what was up and what was down, which was lovely, really, but he wanted to remember these details later so-

 

A horrendous noise squawked up at them from the floor, just as John was about to-

 

“Sher-”

 

Sherlock lowered his lips to John’s neck, making a negating noise and rolling his hips against John’s.

 

It was enough of a distraction from the noise to yank John back into the insistent climb of his arousal. He tumbled right over the edge of it, spilling himself in Sherlock’s hand and the sheets with a needy moan.

 

Sherlock kissed his neck lingeringly, hands stroking John’s hips tenderly, then up his stomach.

 

“What… what was that awful noise?” John asked as he regained his breath.

 

“I believe that was your phone.”

 

The grating noise happened again.

 

John groaned. “It needs to stop doing that.”

 

In a neat little maneuver, Sherlock freed an arm and fished the phone from the floor, answering it before John could gather the wits to stop him.

 

“Do you know what an obscene hour it is to be calling?” Sherlock grunted.

 

John couldn’t make out the words, precisely, but he knew that voice even without being able to hear what was said.

 

“Well I’ll be certain to tell him, though next time you decide to re-gift a present, you might consider including the charger.”

 

Sherlock ended the call, and when the phone made another awful noise almost immediately, he held down a button that seemed to power it off completely.

 

“Harriet?” John asked.

 

Sherlock made a noise low in his throat. It wasn’t precisely agreement, but John could only think of two people with the number to that phone. “What, exactly, did she mean by-”

 

“Don’t know, don’t care,” John said, turning in Sherlock’s arms to put his face against his mate’s neck. The motion made him hiss, and Sherlock whimpered involuntarily. “You’re going shopping.”

 

“What?”

 

“Last time I went shopping two arseholes tried to jump me,” John said. “We need a kettle, tea, food, and I need peracetmol.”

 

“But John-”

 

“Please, Sherlock,” John cut him off. “You _really_ can’t keep getting me off every time I hurt.”

 

Sherlock huffed in response to that and tugged free of the sheets to get up. John sat up just enough to realize he shouldn’t be sitting up and that the sun was far too bright and leaned back down, just in time to catch his cell phone in the chest when Sherlock tossed it at him.

 

“It’s on, just on vibrate,” Sherlock said from somewhere beyond the shadows of the sheet.

 

“Got it,” John replied.

 

He felt Sherlock hesitate, hovering in the doorway, and then he felt his mate turn and head out the door.

 

*


	22. Chapter 22

Several hours of unhelpful sleep later, John found he was tired of pretending that the rest was helping. His whole body ached from his neck to his ankles, and when he flexed the muscles in his back he could _feel_ the bruising. Also, somehow his shoulder had gone stiff. John hoped that he just slept on it wrong, but he couldn’t be sure. He climbed carefully out of bed and stripped the top sheet off, making a mental note that they were going to have to expand their inventory of sheets unless they planned on doing laundry every other day.

 

His whole body felt like it had been taken apart and put back together poorly. It was an uncomfortable sort of a feeling, the kind that had come over him when he’d been feverish after being rescued and reminded him of the gray days he was absent from Sherlock in Germany. For a brief moment he felt separated from his mate again, but as soon as he thought of Sherlock he could feel his mate’s presence, buzzing as though just on the peripheral of his senses.

 

Just as John was thinking he might get up and check the bandages on his knuckles, the buzzer rang.

 

In the last three or four days not a single person had used the buzzer to the flat. Mycroft just appeared, in that unsettling way that John was coming to associate with him, and Milton had been banging at the door. So whoever it was had to be some degree of stranger.

 

After the phone call interruption that morning, John was tempted to leave the caller on the doorstep.

 

The buzzer rang again.

 

Ignoring the caller seemed like a reasonable response, given the ache throbbing through him. Trouble was, John had been the one to point out to Sherlock, repeatedly, that they were witnesses in an active investigation.

 

Unfortunately, John also had next to no idea where the answer button was, so he was forced to find pants and the remains of his clothing from the night before and creak his way down to open the door.

 

He supposed he shouldn’t feel quite so surprised to find Sergeant Lestrade waiting.

 

“Sergeant,” John said, pulling the door open.

 

“Thought I’d catch Himself,” Lestrade said, stepping past John into the hall.

 

“Well, he’s out,” John said, letting the outer door close and rolling his shoulder against the ache that had settled back in since Sherlock left.

 

“Out?” Lestrade prompted.

 

“Shopping,” John replied. “Look, if you really want to question me again-”

 

“I don’t make a habit of repeating what I’ve already done unless new facts come to light,” Lestrade replied.

 

“Sorry, I’m just a bit- well. We were out of paracetemol,” he groused. “And tea, and the bloody kettle is in _evidence._ _”_

 

“They ah… binned it, actually. Took photos, but it was pretty well stomped.”

 

John sighed.

 

“If you’d like to make a claim for damages-”

 

“What’s the bloody point?” John sighed. He rubbed his forehead against the headache that was suddenly looming over him, _again,_ and wished Sherlock wouldn’t take his bloody sweet time on a simple shopping trip. “I’d invite you up for tea, but given the circumstances-”

 

“Lord, tell me you don’t still have that mint?”

 

“Bought tea yesterday, actually. But I rather figured you’d tell me they’d binned that along with everything else.”

 

“I… uh… think the blokes put it in the break room.”

 

“Marvelous,” John grumped. _Of course_ that was what happened to the tea. So it didn’t matter that there was a kettle he could put on the hob, because his tea had gone from evidence to break room supplies at the Met and he would honestly rather drink piss than try that mint again.

 

Lestrade just sort of stood there, leaving John to the spiral of his unhappy thoughts.

 

John had a sour taste in his mouth, one that he hated. It was bitterness. Nothing bad had happened, precisely, but any time he had this sort of pain in him he just couldn’t seem to shake the miasma.

 

Harry would be halfway to calling him a sour tit about now.

 

Chuckling at that,  John realized the sergeant was still present. “Err… Can I help you with something?”

 

“Not really, no. I mean, you’re here, so I probably don’t need to worry about warning _you_ that those two you roughed up in the alley are out on bail. I need to speak with Sherlock.”

 

“Well, like I said, he’s not here,” John repeated, putting a hand up to his head as the sun caught on the pins on the sergeant’s uniform and glared into his eyes. “You could try his mobile-”

 

“Tried that, he’s not answering.”

 

“Huh.”

 

“I even texted,” Lestrade said, as though that meant something.

 

“Right,” John said. “So now-?”

 

“I figured it’s safer to wait. If Sherlock’s due back anywhere, it’s here.”

 

For a moment, John stared at the sergeant, confused as to what waiting would accomplish, and then his torso decided to remind him of the fight the day before the way his head had. He sighed and gestured for the sergeant to come along with him, and they creaked their way slowly back up the stairs.

 

“If you don’t mind my saying, Doctor, you don’t look so well,” the sergeant said carefully as John let them back into the flat. “Are you sure you shouldn’t have gone to the-”

 

“Paracetemol,” John interrupted him, turning for the kitchen.

 

Some tea, _any_ tea would be better than standing about in the living room arguing with the sergeant about why he hadn’t gone to the A &E until Sherlock came back. In any other mood it might have been a discussion, but John could tell that if he let the sergeant ask, he’d end up shouting his reply. He was still somewhat rational, though. Rational enough to know that, and rational enough to decide that even the piss-mint was better than picking a fight with a cop when they were witnesses in an open murder investigation.

 

The teapot made it from where it sat to the tap and then the hob before the sergeant made an awkward, apologetic noise behind him.

 

Glancing back, John saw the man fidgeting just a little with his hat.

 

“Sergeant?”

 

“I thought I might… apologize,” the sergeant said.

 

“What for?”

 

“About my misconceptions, when we first met.” “The part where you thought I was a personal physician or the part where you were worried I was abusive?” John asked, flicking on the gas.

 

“Both?” the sergeant said as much as asked. “It’s rather obvious that the former isn’t true and… then the latter…”

 

It was an awkward sort of phrasing, and the way it came out made John wonder how good the man was at his job. John knew he had a temper, he knew there were times he had come across _unhinged_ to some of his exes, but he wasn’t abusive. He knew what that was like and he was careful to keep a handle on the aggressive part of himself when it threatened to lash out.

 

Of course from the outside, with what the cop had seen, it might look differently, but John knew that it wasn’t like that. Sherlock knew the same. If the cop-

 

No, the _sergeant_. If the sergeant was any good at his job, he ought to be able to tell the difference.

 

Not that it was any of John’s business, so long as the sergeant didn’t try to arrest either of them for a crime they didn’t commit, but… the man _did_ seem to turn up a lot.

 

He might be suspicious.

 

“Doctor Watson?”

 

“Yeah,” John said, shaking the fog from his head. “Sure, I mean, don’t worry about it.”

 

“Too late,” the sergeant said. “With the amount I’ve been running in to you this week, it’s almost social. That means manners.”

 

That got a little laugh out of John. He reached for a mug from the cabinet and his hand spasmed. The mug clattered first to the countertop and then fell to the floor, raining more of Sherlock’s detritus from the countertop around John’s feet and exploding into a myriad of pieces of mug on the kitchen floor.

 

“Doctor Watson?” the sergeant asked, sounding concerned.

 

“Just my hand,” John said, absently. That was odd, though, wasn’t it? He had a grip on the cup, but his fingers just let it go. That sort of thing hadn’t happened before, though it wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities if you considered the sort of wound he’d taken to the shoulder. Still, the wound to his shoulder had been months ago.

 

“Didn’t sound like-” the sergeant said as he stepped into the doorway, and then whistled, “yeah that didn’t sound like just your hand.”

 

“Caught that,” John said.

 

“No you didn’t.”

 

“Funny,” John replied. He shuffled back, glad that the glassware had already crashed down and what was on the floor now was more perishable and less jagged. He knelt to start gathering it up.

 

The sergeant hovered over his shoulder. John tried to ignore how close he was.

 

Then his hand spasmed again. He sliced his palm on a shard of the mug.

 

John sat up, recoiling from the sting of it. He stared at the blood on his hand. It came quickly, more quickly than he thought it ought to, spilling from his palm to the floor with the pieces of the mug.

 

Everything else went quiet, like there was nothing else to hear. The sounds of the flat, the voice of the sergeant standing behind him, it all fell away, and all John could hear was his own breathing.

 

He wasn’t in the flat anymore, he was in that strange hallway in that country manor that he kept dreaming about. There was blood on the tile. John closed his eyes, pressing them together. He had never been in that house, he did not know that house, there was no way he was _in_ that house.

 

When he opened his eyes he wished he hadn’t reminded himself of that.

 

_He isn_ _’t inside anywhere, he is outside in the sun. It’s bright and its been bright for so long that his eyesight is going, but he can see the blood from Harris as it makes its way to the thirsty earth below the overturned remains of the truck._

_John stares at the blood, watching as it pools in the burnt gully of the tire ruts, and tries not to think of the blood pumping out of him just the same way._

_His mouth is dry, his lips are starting to chap with dehydration, but it_ _’s only been the night and now it’s only morning._

_He can feel the dull throb of the wound in his shoulder, the tacky feeling of his BDUs sticking to his skin, and he thinks about getting out of his jacket, but that would mean moving._

_And John can_ _’t move._

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As we stand right now, dear readers, we've got seven more chapters of this one. There's a possibility of an eighth, but it's a slim one. I think I can edit in what's needed to the chapters I have. I'm also going to try and get the entire thing posted by the end of the year. I would say by Christmas, but I don't think that's going to happen. The posting schedule would be too hectic, and I do bookkeeping at work. "End of the Year" is like an even in an MMORPG. If this were The Secret World, I'd be a member of the Illuminati and there'd be an explosive charge with a timer waiting for me if I fail.
> 
> That said, I hope you've enjoyed this chapter. I'm posting it as the start of my birthday events today. Yay!


	23. Chapter 23

Greg had seen plenty in his tenure as a police constable. Still, when _Doctor_ Watson went still at the sight of blood, Greg was confused. He’d heard of nurses who couldn’t handle blood, but doctors generally had to be made of tougher stuff. And the man was, seemingly, an actual doctor and not one of those overly-academic types that liked to swan around getting overpaid for simple tasks. Watson had spoken like one to the emergency medical technicians when they arrived for Milton, and from the file that had been pulled when he and Sherlock had been questioned, the man was a real MD.

 

No, Doctor Watson was a doctor.

 

This had to be something else.

 

The file that had come up in the background check run at the precinct had mentioned a discharge of some sort, and Sherlock kept bandying about the word _veteran_ like it was a saber. Given what he’d seen of Dr. Watson’s occasionally fluctuating moods, it could have something to do with a stress related disorder.

 

If that were the case, Greg had to be careful in approaching him.

 

Greg wished, desperately, that he’d paid more attention in that little training seminar about dealing with aggressive suspects. Not that he’d needed it on any of the perpetrators that he picked up, but there might have been something useful that he could use on Doctor Watson.

 

Because as much as Greg wanted to write the shorter man off as something he could handle, _Doctor Watson_ had done in two armed thugs in an alley.

 

Still, Greg _had_ to approach him. The bleeding needed to be stopped. If Dr. Watson did not realize there was a problem with his hand…

 

Greg weighed his options, only to have his thoughts interrupted by a commotion in the hallway, followed shortly after by the door bursting open and a wild-eyed Sherlock erupting into the room. Holmes was breathing heavily as though he had run the length of Hyde Park to make it back to the flat, carrying an overloaded plastic bag in one hand, looking like he’d taken a tumble in the grass along the way. His eyes latched on to Dr. Watson immediately and softened - something Greg was as astounded by as Watson’s ability to quiet Sherlock. Greg had never seen Sherlock look that intently at anything with less than a cutting look.

 

The kind he turned accusingly on Greg.

 

“Whatever idiotic interference you are contemplating, desist,” Sherlock snapped. He swung the bag he was carrying at Greg and blustered into the kitchen.

 

“What are you talking about? He looks to be having some sort of a flashback,” Greg protested, fumbling with the bag. It was heavy, bulky, and seemed to contain a kettle along with whatever else was rattling about.

 

“Do not presume to know what is best for him,” Sherlock replied, returning from the kitchen with a handful of towels. He dropped to his knees before Watson, ignoring the bits of shattered ceramic even when they snagged his expensive pants. He dropped one of the towels to the floor so that it covered the blood.

 

Dr. Watson continued staring at the floor as the blood soaked into the towel.

 

Sherlock waited, patiently, without reaching out for the good doctor. He sat on his shins, hands in his lap resting atop the remaining tea towel, and watched the doctor’s bent head. Sherlock focused on the blond man, ignoring everything else.

 

Greg felt utterly out of place as a spectator to it. Sherlock was never like this, at least in Greg’s experience, though Greg would be the first to admit that in his experience Sherlock was also _high._

 

Minutes passed, minutes that seemed to stretch on and on. Greg shifted from foot to foot, looking away from the pair of them only to turn back, concerned about the blood that would be coming from Dr. Watson’s hand. That was when he noticed that Sherlock’s pants hadn’t just snagged, the shards of the mug had managed to cut his knees.

 

Before he could speak up about that, Watson’s head lifted slowly and he looked up at Sherlock.

 

Released from stillness, it seemed, by Watson’s gaze, Sherlock reached forward and covered the doctor’s hand with the tea towel. It was bizarre to watch the scene play out before him, as though both men were moving through some unwritten script. Watson said nothing, but didn’t protest or lash out, as Greg feared any interference of his own might induce. He knelt there, left arm twitching slightly, sagged slightly forward, and let Sherlock wrap the tea towel around his injury.

 

“I won’t have time for your questions today, Lestrade,” Sherlock said in a quiet voice, keeping his eyes on Watson’s as he took careful care of the man’s hand. “As you can see, I have more important matters to attend to.”

 

Greg hesitated. It was hard to argue with Sherlock’s prioritizing of the situation, not matter how odd it was to see him putting a person so far up his list, but it would be negligent not to question him about a ny of Miltons other associates. The police had looked, but there was neither hide nor hair of those they were aware of. And he really did need to tell Sherlock about the two men who’d been let out. The men had made some wild accusations, about Sherlock, about Doctor Watson, and while the detectives on the case took them at face value, they sounded like _threats_ to Greg. Especially as it was beginning to look like all the associates Sherlock had been questioned about had disappeared in a manner similar to Milton. If that was the case, and Sherlock knew something - and Sherlock _always_ knew something - then Sherlock’s answers could save lives.

 

“I’m sorry, Sherlock, but I can’t just-”

 

Sherlock turned a glare on him that was vicious enough that Greg took an involuntary step back.

 

As soon as Sherlock’s gaze left Watson’s, the man seemed to lose the strength in his spine, folding down over his knees silently.

 

Looking over at the doctor, Greg felt wrong for asking Sherlock to come in for questioning.

 

“John needs me,” Sherlock said in an unapproachable tone, reinforcing Greg’s thoughts.

 

“This evening, then,” Greg said.

 

Sherlock turned his attention back to Watson, reaching for his shoulders. Gentle hands rested lightly on the man, but got no response. Greg watched, still feeling like an unwanted voyeur, but Watson did not respond.

 

Obviously frustrated by this, Sherlock again glared up at Greg, snapping, “ _If_ he can spare me. Now _go._ ”

 

Greg nodded. Rather than giving voice to any of the questions he had about any of this, he turned for the door. Behind him, he could almost _feel_ Sherlock’s attention return to Watson. As he was closing the door behind himself, Greg happened to hear one last word out of Sherlock.

 

“John,” Sherlock said softly, in a tone that sounded heartbroken in a way that Greg had never thought to hear out of him.

 

He closed the door firmly and made his way out to the street.

 

A bitter part of his heart wondered why Abigail never looked at him that way.

 

*


	24. Chapter 24

John came back to himself with warm arms around him and a soft blanket under his cheek. He could smell the chemical scent of what he’d worked into the couch, but stronger than that was the scent of Sherlock. His mate was wrapped around him, not quite at octopus level, but definitely cocooning him in the warm safety of arms and blanket. There was something off about it though, he could _smell_ Sherlock, could _feel_ Sherlock’s body wrapped around him, but beyond that, where normally he could sense Sherlock’s moods enough that it was like tasting him, there was nothing.

 

It was disorienting.

 

“What happened?” John asked.

 

“I could reconstruct it for you,” Sherlock said, sounding oddly detached in the same manner that his emotions were choked off, “but I am lead to believe that in this instance you should be telling me.”

 

John opened his mouth, and then he closed it. There was nothing. The memory was gone, but the sense of it was there. He turned in to Sherlock’s embrace, burying his face against his mate’s stomach.

 

“Your hand is spasming,” Sherlock said, stroking long fingers through his hair. “Did something happen?”

 

“No.”

 

Sherlock didn’t comment on that, and John was glad of it.

 

John’s hand twitched.

 

A rush of pain came, then, starting with a sharp stab that faded to an insistent ache.

 

“Your hand,” Sherlock said before John could ask. His voice sounded deflated, and John looked up to see that his mate had a stricken look on his face and his eyes were trained on John’s left hand.

 

John looked down to see that it was bandaged and twitching, fingers moving like they had some rhythm to tap out.

 

“That’s new,” John said, staring at it. Paying attention to his hand made the twitching stop, which was-

 

“Psychosomatic, if you prefer the popular psychology phrasing,” Sherlock said.

 

Somewhere inside of him, John had a response. _Just because it_ _’s popular doesn’t mean it isn’t true_ , or _Of course we could go with the Victorian diagnosis_ , or some other rot. The trouble was that from where John was inside of himself, those words were on the other side of a desert that rivaled the Sahara. Instead of saying anything, he stared at his hand, waiting for it to start twitching again.

 

Sherlock threaded his fingers through John’s, nimble digits warm against a hand that John hadn’t even realized was cold.

 

The warmth was a shock, and with it came a bit of what had happened before. It was just a flash of a concerned expression on a face that John thought he should recognize but didn’t quite.

 

“Someone was here, weren’t they?” John asked.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Sherlock replied, tightening his grip on John’s hand in a reassuring squeeze.

 

That, too, seemed wrong, but the rational part of John was very far away, waiting with his words, and all John could really feel was exhaustion.

 

“John,” Sherlock said softly, drawing his attention up to look at the handsome face of his mate.

 

For a moment neither said anything, but Sherlock watched his face with a melancholy look, and John managed a smile for him. “Sherlock?”

 

“Trust me,” Sherlock replied, lifting his other hand to stroke John’s hair from his temple.

 

“With my life.”

 

“Then for tonight, don’t worry about it.”

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roller coaster this month. Sent the big computer for fixing (fan problems, sounded like a lawn mower, and your computer must never sound like a lawn mower!) and so I was stuck with only the dainty little netbook, which is not good to try and edit on. But here, dear readers! I have the big laptop back and so we get another chapter!


	25. Chapter 25

John’s bewilderment was understandable, if you understood what happened in a flashback episode.

 

At the start of the episode, Sherlock hadn’t the faintest idea.

 

When it all started, all he knew is that John was _terrified_.

 

The sensation of it was bewildering. What Sherlock usually felt of John, aside from the intense desire that was an undercurrent to his warmth, was a general solidity. John was like an anchor in a stormy sea, if one insisted upon utilizing poetic metaphor to describe the sensation. John _felt_ like he was Sherlock’s, just as he should, and that feeling was strong and sure.

 

 So John, gripped by an inexplicable sense of fear, even one that was completely foreign to him, was a shock like being dunked as a human in a frozen lake. Sherlock lost the sense of up and down. The bottom seemed to drop out of the world. It had not helped that it hit just as John’s assailants attempted a repeat performance on _him_.

 

He understood, a little, what John meant about the broadcasting, if _that_ was what it felt like to be the recipient.

 

The sudden wash of feeling had overwhelmed him, plain and simple. Their connection made the feelings stronger than reason or thought, putting Sherlock entirely out of himself, but it was only a few moments of that bottomless feeling before the wolf took over and there was steel in his veins again. The wolf took care of him during the worst of the rush, but the surging strength within him was more focused on John than on the fight. Sherlock scrambled free of his assailants without bothering to punish them properly for what they had done to John and he hurried home as quickly as he was able.

 

Minor irritation of Lestrade pushed aside, and Sherlock had been able to bundle John onto the couch to recover, and then once he stopped shaking, Sherlock took John away into bed for rest. John latched onto Sherlock as though _Sherlock_ might anchor John against turbulence - a preposterous notion, but an endearing sentiment that nonetheless managed to pierce the tiny portion of Sherlock that remained admittedly sentimental - and fell asleep as soon as his head weighed down on Sherlock’s chest.

 

Once certain John was sleeping, and sleeping too deeply for dreams to trouble him, Sherlock freed his phone and began to look up what might be ailing his mate.  It was only then, by the too-bright light of the LED screen that shone like the moon in the darkness, while John was sleeping against him with a tight grip on his shirt, that Sherlock began to understand. There was a derth of information on wounded soldiers to be found on the internet.

 

He lay with John on his chest, propped against the headboard with his neck at angle that would undoubtedly cramp by morning, and he read every scrap of information he could on what might cause a waking man to lose touch with the world around him. Drugs, of course, but John was not on any medication either prescribed or recreational. He did not present as having any form of epilepsy, and he certainly was not intoxicated.

 

The only available diagnosis was one that Sherlock could not confirm. There was nothing specific enough about John’s symptoms aside from the fear and the disconnection to convince Sherlock that _that_ was what troubled John.

 

A text from Mycroft interrupted his searching, and only the knowledge that hurling the phone into the wall would mean getting up to reacquire it and disturbing John kept Sherlock from throwing it.

 

Instead he took the high road.

 

He texted back.

 

_Anthea about her own business, again? —SH_

Mycroft didn’t reply to that.

 

A part of Sherlock reveled in the bewildered feeling, sharply aware that there was no choice of John’s involved in this sharing of it, it was _instinct_. And instinct sent John to Sherlock just as readily as his free-will. That was an empowering feeling, knowing that he was what John turned to.

 

But that reveling feeling was a backdrop. There was the more pressing concern of John’s well-being to deal with, and that was more important than any sort of exaltation. So he curled around his mate and he read everything on the internet he could find about soldiers and their ailments on return from active duty.

 

Even the diagnosis that he disagreed with.

 

*

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it’s been far longer than I told you dear readers it would be before posting this part. The reason for that is John. Well… not just John, but also Sherlock. I don’t think it will spoil any fans of the BBC Sherlock to know that John has PTSD. I normally don’t like giving away things like that before it’s stated in the story, but we all had a reasonable assumption that we were going to get here (I hope). There are other things that could cause memory time loss like what John is experiencing, but in this instance, his blackout is very much related to PTSD.
> 
> I want to acknowledge that for all his massive intellect, Sherlock was operating, in the last chapter, on raw emotional instinct. Just like with Mycroft and that sink episode, I can’t state that it was the “correct” way to handle the situation.
> 
> I have stated several times in the posting of this work of fiction that I do not recommend following the path of this story in treating people who have problems like John and Sherlock. I do not wish for this story to delegitimize that struggle of those with these issues. I am not a doctor. I cannot give an accurate diagnosis of an individual or prescribe treatment. In this particular work of fiction, John and Sherlock have a bond that offers support of a fantastical nature. If you or someone you love or know is experiencing symptoms of an illness, I recommend seeking professional help. That includes if you feel confused about how to interact with someone who may need assistance.
> 
> I also do not necessarily agree with Sherlock’s denial in this chapter. There is an awful tendency to deny others their state of existence - be it thoughts, illnesses, or emotions - and I don’t support it. Yes, I know this is just fiction. But I live in America, and given the state of my country in 2017, I can’t post something presumptuous of the right way to treat someone who is suffering without some sort of disclaimer. I do not want to write fiction that is heartless or arrogant.
> 
> Also, Sherlock finds out that he is wrong about John’s condition in a very short time after this chapter. It may take pages and pages to get there, but it’s not far off in terms of a clock inside the story.


	26. Chapter 26

In the morning, John felt a bit better. He hadn’t dreamed the night before, which was a little strange, but he woke to Sherlock broadcasting a vague, supportive sort of interest and John figured that even bad dreams couldn’t stand up to a determined werewolf. John came to with one of Sherlock’s long arms tight around his middle and the other stretched over him, loosely clutching a phone that looked to be entirely out of battery. Sherlock’s breathing was sluggish, and that made John smile, for some reason. Probably because it meant Sherlock had gotten sleep.

 

He wondered if he would ever understand Sherlock’s war on rest.

 

“Alright, Sherlock?” he asked his mate.

 

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Sherlock insisted, letting go of the phone to tighten his arms around John.

 

“Sure you weren’t,” John said, smile tugging at his lips.

 

Warm lips traveled from his ear to his shoulder.

 

“Sherlock,” John said softly, eyes drifting shut, “who _was_ here last night?”

 

Sherlock’s hand stroked his stomach. “Lestrade.”

 

“What was the sergeant doing here?”

 

“Probably wanted to question one of us.”

 

“He generally does,” John said with a sigh.

 

“Don’t fret, John,” Sherlock said, nuzzling his neck. “I got the kettle.”

 

“Did you remember the tea?”

 

“I remembered the tea.”

 

“Should I note the day?” John asked, managing a little chuckle.

 

The horrible squawking that was the ringtone of John’s mobile went off again, and whatever Sherlock’s response to the tease was got lost to the growl that came out of him in reply. John sighed, softly, and turned his face into the pillow. It had to be Harriet, didn’t it? It had to be. No one else had the number.

 

John wasn’t sure he could handle a call from Harriet.

 

It wasn’t something he could put off forever, though.

 

“Hand me the phone, Sherlock.”

 

“I’m not certain that’s wise.”

 

John stilled at that. It rang of Mycroft’s earlier words about _what was best_ for Sherlock, and he disliked thinking there were any so-glaring similarities between his mate and the infuriating man seemingly bent on goading John into some ill-advised act of physical violence.

 

Maybe, he thought, it was just a werewolf thing and it had nothing to do with their normal personalities.

 

“Your sister is, at best, antagonistic to you. I’m not sure now is a good time for you to be assaulted with her.”

 

John decided he was right, and it was just a wolfy way of phrasing things. Sherlock meant well. That didn’t make it better. “It’ll round out the third day,” John said, frowning. “Just give me the phone.”

 

“John…”

 

“Give me the phone, Sherlock.”

 

There was some rustling around and a good deal of shifting and Sherlock fished the phone out of wherever it had fallen the day before, the night before, or whenever it had left one of their possessions to join the clutter on the floor. He relinquished it to John with a sour aftertaste to the gesture, one that John studiously ignored.

 

As soon as he answered, a worried voice said, “I’ve been calling for a week, and you haven’t answered.”

 

That obviously was _not Harriet_.

 

“Clara,” Sherlock supplied in a bored tone even though John hadn’t asked a question. If he were thinking more clearly, John would wonder if the bond with his mate was telepathic instead of empathic.

 

“Who is that?” the woman on the phone asked.

 

“Ah, that’s… it’s not what you think. I mean you haven’t rung up who you think.”

 

“Whoever the hell this is,” the woman said, voice going steely, “you put Harry Watson on the phone this instant or I’m calling the police.”

 

“Don’t do that,” Sherlock groused, “we’ve seen enough of them this week.”

 

“That’s it-” she started.

 

“No, don’t,” John said, elbowing Sherlock to shut him up. “It’s unrelated. I haven’t seen Harry in… it’s been-”

 

“Eleven days since you saw her, though she called yesterday morning.”

 

“She called yesterday morning,” John said, wondering at just how much time _felt_ like it had passed as opposed to how much _had_ passed. His days seemed to be quite full, now that he was back, fuller than expected.

 

“Where is she?”

 

“I don’t even know who this is-”

 

“It’s _Clara,_ _”_ Sherlock said, almost in unison with the Clara on the phone.

 

She added, “And I could say the same about you.”

 

“John,” John replied.

 

“John who?”

 

_“Watson,”_ Sherlock snapped into the phone.

 

John heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.

 

“Are you done with this tedious questioning yet? We do not have possession of Harriet, and we are not aware of where she has washed up.”

 

That was colder than John anticipated hearing out of Sherlock. John looked back at him, but his mate’s expression was stony and for _once_ he wasn’t broadcasting what he felt about it. Rather than interrupt the call further, John pulled out of his grip and rose, heading into the sitting room.

 

Once he was clear of the bedroom, John shut the door behind himself. It seemed like a strangely serious thing to do for some reason, but John couldn’t manage this with his mate’s interruptions. More than that, he couldn’t talk to this Clara person with Sherlock’s knowing gaze on him. There was just… too much to handle.  “Sorry about that, Clara.”

 

_“You’re_ Johnny,” Clara said softly. All the steel from earlier had left her tone.

 

“Most people call me John.”

 

“Harry doesn’t,” Clara replied. “You’ll always be Johnny to her.”

 

“Of course I will,” John said with a sigh. “Look, I really haven’t seen her. And I’m sorry about what Sherlock said, it’s-” he stopped.

 

He didn’t know what to put there. It could be called unfair, but was it? It wasn’t untrue, and because it wasn’t untrue he didn’t think it was entirely unfair. He stared at the wreck of the couch, looking at the spots where the half-assed job at cleaning the blood off had bleached the pattern away, and he sighed, feeling the abuse of the last few days as a bone-deep ache that culminated in a sharp pain in his shoulder.

 

“Where did you see her?” That sounded like an odd question, until Clara went on with, “Was she drunk again? She was so upset last year when they contacted the family, and… she was doing ok with it, I thought, until-”

 

No. John didn’t want to hear this. He knew he didn’t want to hear it, but he couldn’t not hear it. If this was his fault he had to know. “Until?”

 

“Christ, you don’t know, do you? You were gone, of course. I guess I just thought-”

 

A weight dropped in his stomach, the kind that would take him to his knees if it was what he thought it was, but he knew from years back that it was better to know. Whatever muck had stirred up would only be worse if he waited to find out, would only rile his temper and make him do something stupid, and wasn’t that just the way it happened? Johnny was the good son, always rushing in to try and save his sister, to stop his father, to soothe his mother.

 

“Until what?” John snapped.

 

“She got the sack. Everything went to shit, but she promised she wasn’t going to start drinking. She only went to town for an interview, and-”

 

“I’ll ring you back, Clara.”

 

“What are you going to do?”

 

“Just… trust me, Clara,” John said, “I’ll ring you back.”

 

It took a fumbling moment to figure out how to shut off the call, and before he could manage it he heard Clara’s soft voice say, “Be careful, John.”

 

John stared at the phone.

 

He took a deep breath, and made himself take another one. Every time he thought he got himself on even keel, something like this happened. Every time he thought he could take a step forward there was a weight around his ankle dragging him back, pulling him under, and it was suffocating to be right back here again, even with all that had happened in the last few months to change his life. He stared at the phone and thought about doing nothing. He thought about dropping it on the table and heading back to bed and pulling a pillow over his head. He thought about pushing Sherlock down to the mattress and fucking this awful feeling out of himself.

 

No.

 

He wouldn’t use Sherlock for that. He wouldn’t do something like that to his mate, who was wonderful and didn’t deserve that sort of thing.

 

John stared at the phone and wished he couldn’t hear Harriet’s playful, sober voice croon out, _“Joohhhnnnnny.”_ He wished he couldn’t remember her sneaking him smokes or the two of them pouring out every bottle of liquor in the house the night that dad wrapped his car around that tree. He tried not to think of her smiling face or the first time he realized she’d gotten his haircut on purpose.

 

He looked at the phone and tried not to think of her forcing it on him, saying that then she’d be able to get in touch with him. Throwing him a line, because she needed one, and how he’d been asleep when she called, asleep and thoroughly sideways off pain and a nightmare and naked and in Sherlock’s arms.

 

He stared at the phone.

 

He stared at it until a pale hand covered the phone, and he looked up and Sherlock was there. The unreadable expression was still on his face.

 

Numbly, John wondered why he hadn’t felt Sherlock coming. Normally he could feel Sherlock’s approach from any distance, but not this time. It was like Sherlock had snuck up on him. Then he realized that _Sherlock wasn_ _’t broadcasting_.

 

Oh, John knew Sherlock was there, but it was like knowing you still had your foot when it fell asleep and you couldn’t actually _feel_ that it was there. John didn’t know what Sherlock was feeling. That was… it was different. John had known it would be, he’d _known_ he wouldn’t like it.  John couldn’t know that he’d _hate_ it so much, so quickly.

 

“We’re going out, then,” Sherlock said, head tipping to the side as he regarded John’s expression. He gently liberated the phone from John’s hand, setting it aside.

 

John watched his mate, trying to gleam something, but Sherlock was blank and his expression was neutral. John frowned. He found that he _hated_ the call as well. “You’ve got shrubbery in your hair.”

 

“It happens from time to time,” Sherlock replied. He took John by the shoulder and ushered him gently back into the bedroom. “Get dressed.”

 

“How do you know I’m going out?”

 

“You’re not,” Sherlock said.

 

“Sherlock-”

 

“ _We_ are going out to look for Harriet.”

 

“Not until you tell me what she said on the phone yesterday.”

 

*


	27. Chapter 27

Sherlock’s answer to John’s demanding question was succinct, but unhelpful. He catalogued all the things he’d heard during the call, the traffic behind her, the tone of her voice, the wind picked up by the cheaper phone she was using than the one she’d given away. All Sherlock could conclude was that she was in a public place, likely in open air as there had been no reflections of sound to alter the admittedly tinny reception of the call. He explained all this while John dressed, and ended with asking, “Skipping the shower, then?”

 

“Get dressed,” John grunted at his mate.

 

With a degree of indulgence that John was surprised by, Sherlock did as he was asked, turning for the closet and doing away with yesterday’s clothes with no preamble.

 

It was only as Sherlock’s trousers hit the floor that John realized there were little tears in them.

 

Still, Sherlock hadn’t said anything, and John didn’t have all his fancy werewolf senses to catch little things like that.

 

And Sherlock **_still_** wasn’t broadcasting.

 

As much as John had _thought_ he would hate that turn of events, it was worse. His _mind_ itched with the lack of Sherlock’s feelings at the back of it. He could still tell where his mate was, in a general directional sense of things, but nothing more reassuring came through.

 

John wondered what it meant.

 

No.

 

John _worried_ what that meant.

 

He had been wondering what it meant since it started, but the longer it went on the more troubling it was.

 

Because Sherlock was a miracle, really, and John was an invalid ex-soldier with a twitchy hand and a trainwreck of a family.  Sherlock had a trust fund and a manor house and an extended family that cost more to dress than the cost of the Watson house and the contents of the entire Watson clan’s bank accounts combined. And Sherlock was silent, and all John could think was that it was too much to take in, that he was too much of a… a burden, or… or that he wasn’t quite-

 

Agitated, John couldn’t find the right words to ask Sherlock about why he was doing it. Every time he started to ask he felt a throb of pain from some traitorous part of his frail, human body that had him gritting his teeth together. He gave up trying after a while.

 

Once Sherlock was dressed they headed out.

 

John’s back hurt, his hand hurt, and his head hurt. Sherlock kept pace beside him, long legs slowed to match John’s angry stride, and the two of them headed through the morning streets avoiding most of the crowds.

 

There was only one place Harry would be at this hour, and John knew it.

 

He turned them towards Regent’s Park.

 

“Of course you’re likely correct,” Sherlock allowed as the two of them skirted around a small parade of strollers on the sidewalk up from the tube, “I’d come to the same conclusion, given her last point of contact. Still, I missed something. What’s in the park?”

 

“A lot of grass and dirt,” John grumbled.

 

“Sentiment, John,” Sherlock replied, “what _sentiment_ is in the park.”

 

“I’ll tell you later,” John said.

 

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

 

After that, Sherlock fell silent. They walked together, close enough that their sleeves brushed from time to time, but for the entire hour it took to beat a foot path to their destination, neither of them said a word.

 

The dull ache in John’s body gave over to a dull ache in his chest, and his shoulders sagged by degrees as they headed through the streets. As they headed up Park Village E, Sherlock’s hand brushed against his. The feeling of his mate’s skin against his sent a surge of relief through him, and John sighed at the loss of it.

 

A few steps further, Sherlock’s hand caught his.

 

John looked over, but Sherlock was looking ahead, eyes bright and taking in the morning around them. What was Horatio’s joke that Sunday morning? He could _see_ John thinking? Well. John could say the same for Sherlock now, though his mate remained silent.

 

He kept hold of Sherlock’s hand as they went on, glad of the little relief of his mate’s touch as they reached the end of Park Village and turned out onto Primrose Hill.

 

It felt a hundred years ago when John and Harry had been children. That picnic in May with the four of them. John could still recall the color of their mother’s dress against the picnic blanket, bright like the sunshine before everything had gone to hell. His pace slowed as they entered the park. Even though it wasn’t a holiday, there were plenty of people in the park. For a moment, John thought he’d have trouble finding her.

 

But no. There she was, under the same tree they’d sat that day, slumped against the bark and looking considerably worse for the wear.

 

Sherlock kept silent as they headed over, letting John have his hand back.

 

John knelt beside Harriet. She hated that name, but in that moment as he checked her pulse, her temperature, made sure that there wasn’t anything wrong with her beyond a vicious blood alcohol level and a serious need of a shower, John hated his sister.

 

It didn’t mean that she was any less his sister, but he felt it.

 

The feeling was an empty one.

 

Sherlock stepped forward as John shifted Harry’s weight from the tree to himself, and, almost like they’d discussed it, he helped John get Harry’s arm properly over his shoulders.

 

Sherlock didn’t try to take Harry from him.

 

John wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. He wouldn’t have given her over to Sherlock, despite the pain he was feeling she was his to deal with after all, but…

 

No, John told himself sternly. That was a dark, awful path to tread down in his thoughts and he wouldn’t be able to stop if he started and the end wasn’t something he could bring himself to even think about.

 

The walk back home would be a long one.

 

*


	28. Chapter 28

Sherlock _did_ take possession of the phones. Both of them. The one that was Harry’s that John had and the one that was Harry’s that she’d got in a store after giving up hers. Information flowed from his fingers that was undoubtedly helpful to the recipient - it could only be Clara, John surmised, as Sherlock would drop dead before _giving_ Mycroft anything and likely did not know any other Watsons to contact in this situation.

 

John occupied himself with getting Harry cleaned up.

 

That took nearly an hour. At some point, Sherlock leaned in the doorway and said, “Clara hasn’t decided if she’s coming or not.”

 

John just nodded. He felt the same, and family had a sort of obligation in these instances.

 

The buzzer rang, and John stared in the direction of it in confusion.

 

“Probably Lestrade,” Sherlock said, turning and heading out of the bathroom doorway.

 

If they were going to have company, it would be best to put Harriet to bed. They could move her to the couch later, when there wasn’t an inquisitive police sergeant standing in their living room.

 

Harry was a bit of a handful, though she was still mostly asleep. John fought briefly with her flailing arms, pleased at least that the bruises she had didn’t indicate any altercations worse than falling over, and that he hadn’t found any needle marks. Once, years ago when he was still in med school, he’d found one, and it had terrified him when she wouldn’t wake up to answer what it was.

 

They were about the same height, though she was thinner than he was, so John bundled her into his robe and tucked her into bed.

 

As he came out into the living room, he found that Lestrade was staring at Sherlock with a no-nonsense look on his face. Sherlock had his arms folded on his chest and was looming over Lestrade.

 

Neither of _them_ were speaking either.

 

All the silence was starting to get to John.

 

“Someone say something,” he said, coming round and slumping onto the couch.

 

“Sherlock is needed for questioning,” the sergeant said. He frowned. _“Again.”_

 

John looked up at that. “Does this have to do with that bit of shrubbery in his hair?”

 

“It very well may,” the sergeant said, grinding his teeth together. “So the two of you need to come with me. I can’t postpone-”

 

 _“I_ can’t go anywhere right now,” John said.

 

Sherlock made an eloquent gesture in John’s direction.

 

“The cut wasn’t _that_ bad.”

 

“The cut-?” John started to ask, only to stop when he realized that it had been _the sergeant_ that was present when he did it. He clenched his fist, feeling the tightening of the bandage and the pull of the wound as a pleased little sting against the emptiness of the room. “It’s not the cut.”

 

A groan from the bedroom added to the veracity of that statement.

 

The sergeant looked at Sherlock, and then at John, and took a breath.

 

Before either of them realized he was at it, he pushed past Sherlock and marched for the bedroom door.

 

“What are you doing?” John demanded as the sergeant yanked the door open hard enough to rattle the hinges.

 

“I warned you about this, Sherlock,” the sergeant said in a low, dangerous sounding voice, “I’m not going to cover for you this time, anything you’ve done-”

 

The sergeant’s mouth snapped shut as he looked at the contents of their bedroom.

 

“Before you begin any ridiculous insinuations,” Sherlock said, sounding a little tired, “ask who that is. I very much doubt I have the patience to stomach you accusing John and, _or_ I of fornicating with his sister.”

 

“His _sister?_ _”_

 

“My sister,” John admitted, hating how dreary the word sounded as it came out of his mouth. He scrubbed a hand across his face. “Who needed a place to sleep it off. Who I can’t- No, who I _won_ _’t_ leave unattended.”

 

“As I told you yesterday, Doctor Watson,” the sergeant said, “I need to speak to _Sherlock._ _”_

 

“And I am right here,” Sherlock replied. “Speak.”

 

Sergeant Lestrade glared at Sherlock.

 

“Is he under arrest?” John asked.

 

“Not yet,” the sergeant said.

 

For a moment the three of them stood there. John took the few steps over to where the sergeant stood in the bedroom doorway, peeked in to check on Harry for a moment, and then closed the door with all of them on the outside of it. The sergeant didn’t protest, but he did take a step back.

 

That was good. It calmed something dangerously anxious that had been rattling around in the cage of John’s chest.

 

“I’ll get the kettle on, then,” he said, turning past the sergeant and heading for the kitchen.

 

Sherlock was still standing near the front door, eyes trained on the sergeant in a way that looked predatory, a sort of look that John hadn’t seen since Russia. John paused, but Sherlock waved him in to the kitchen.

 

“So,” the sergeant said, “I suppose we should get started.”

 

“Once you come away from the door.”

 

That surprised John.

 

If there was some reaction from the sergeant to that, the man didn’t voice it. Instead there was the sound of footsteps and the sergeant headed over to the couch.

 

“Dr. Watson’s assailants have made bail,” the sergeant said.

 

“Did they?” Sherlock replied, in a tone that John thought he recognized from conversations he’d overheard between Sherlock and Mycroft. It was the tone that said Sherlock was hiding something.

 

Apparently the sergeant knew that tone as well. _“Christ,_ Sherlock, how did you know that?”

 

In the kitchen, on the table there was a Tesco’s bag on the only clear spot to be found. There were boxes in the bag, smears of what looked like mud on it, and in places the bag itself was rent by the edges of its contents.

 

“Because they attempted to assail me similarly in Bedford Square Garden last night.”

 

“The sort of thing you call 999 for, Sherlock.”

 

“If you’ve come here to warn us that they are on the outside of custody, you’re a bit late,” Sherlock said, sounding impatient.

 

One of the bag’s contents was a brand new, expensive looking kettle. John thanked heaven that Sherlock had managed to remember it. Apparently there was some issue with John trying to get a kettle into the place.

 

Then he took the kettle from the bag, and the box was half-flattened on one side.

 

John heaved a heavy sigh, unsurprised at the mangled remains of the kettle. It might just be the act of buying a kettle for their flat _at all._ Both of them seemed to be having trouble with it. There was a particularly dark colored mark on the bag where the box had been, and John wondered just _how hard_ Sherlock had knocked someone in the head with it.

 

“It’s not-” the sergeant started. Then he sighed. “That’s not _the only_ reason I came,” he said. “When you were interviewed, you said-”

 

“I know what I said,” Sherlock replied. “I said it.”

 

“Sherlock,” the sergeant said in a warning tone. “You can answer these questions, here, now, or you _will_ answer them at the station in very short order.”

 

A dramatic sigh issued from the living room, and then Sherlock huffed out, “Which _part?_ _”_

 

John dumped the box on the floor beside the kitchen bin and went about making enough careful space on the counter, one that wouldn’t rain glassware onto the floor and his bare feet, to get mugs down for tea. He resolved to clean the kitchen or at least organize it to the point where he and Sherlock could both function in tandem while getting use out of it. He filled the old kettle from the tap and set it on the hob. In retaliation for being deprived of yet another electric kettle, John turned the burner up all the way.

 

“How precisely did you intend to solve the murder for me?”

 

“The same way I solved the last one,” Sherlock replied, almost yawning with boredom at having to repeat himself. “With evidence and observation.”

 

“What evidence?” the sergeant demanded, and John _heard_ the man scowling.

 

John pointedly ignored a set of dishes with moist dirt on them. He went back to see what else was in the bag.

 

Paracetamol, which was lovely; three boxes of tea, which seemed excessive; and a carton of milk that had been left sitting out too long. John poured it down the sink, just in case, and turned his face away in case of any smell. He’d do without milk for this sitting, probably do without until Harry was back on her feet or until Clara came to get her.

 

“The evidence that would be obvious if your forensic technicians were even remotely capable of doing their jobs.”

 

“Sherlock, they are capable of doing their jobs. It’s why they’ve _got_ jobs.”

 

“Then how did they miss the fact that the blood at the scene wasn’t entirely the victim’s blood?”

 

“In _that_ alley? How could anyone tell one type of blood from another? The skip, the car fumes… all the samples came back contaminated.”

 

“Of course they did,” Sherlock replied, quite simply. “Whoever splattered the scene did so with blood that had been cut. I believe the lab will come back with higher than normal traces of aminophthaloyl hydrazide.”

 

“Amino-” the sergeant stopped. “What chemical is that?”

 

There was a pause.

 

The kettle whistled, and John shifted the three mugs to the side so he could get a box of tea out. He liberated three teabags, going about doctoring Sherlock’s mug with sugar before pouring the hot water into it. (With the amount Sherlock took the hot water had to dissolve it from the pour or there would be granules left at the bottom by the time he’d finished.) John’s whole body still ached, and his hand was trembling, but there was nothing to be done about any of that yet. There might not be anything to be done about it _at all_. John wouldn’t know until he went back to see a doctor somewhere, and he didn’t relish the idea of any more doctor.

 

Just thinking about a doctor’s office gave him a bit of a shiver. He’d seen too many doctors.

 

“Luminol,” Sherlock said, sounding annoyed.

 

“Why would they mix it with Luminol?”

 

“Probably to cause issues with field testing,” Sherlock said. John could picture the hand wave that followed it.

 

“That seems a little far-fetched,” the sergeant replied.

 

“What was the other reason you came to speak to me today?”

 

“Yesterday,” the sergeant said.

 

“There’s little difference in it now,” Sherlock said, sounding impatient. “What brought you to me?”

 

The tea was ready, and John gathered the mugs up, carefully. If he focused hard enough on his hands, the shaking went away, but there was still enough of a tremble to disturb the surface of the tea. He was only a few steps into the living room before Sherlock was there, taking two of the mugs - somehow guessing correctly at which one was his - and delivering the spare to the sergeant.

 

“What you said in that interview to DI Hopkins,” the sergeant said, “what had him almost slapping you in handcuffs.”

 

“I loathe repeating myself,” Sherlock reminded the sergeant.

 

John paused, sipping his tea, and looked at the seating arrangements the two had worked out. Sergeant Lestrade was sitting on the unmarked side of the sofa, Sherlock obviously having inhabited the armchair before he rose to get the mugs, and there were still no other useful chairs in the room. He could go back to the kitchen, but-

 

“The part about this not being the first one we’d missed,” the sergeant said.

 

“Mm,” Sherlock acknowledged, but didn’t sound like he was paying attention to what was being said.

 

Sherlock’s eyes caught John’s, what felt like the first time since they’d left to retrieve Harry, and he nodded at the spot he’d vacated on the chair. Whatever protest John wanted to make died on his lips when the ache of the fighting throbbed through him again. He shuffled over and sank down to the cushioned seat with a very silent sigh of relief.

 

Once John was settled, Sherlock perched on the arm of the chair beside John, one arm across the back of it, bracing John’s shoulders.

 

The sergeant sighed. “What do you think we missed?”

 

“Have your ‘trained’ ‘technicians’ figured out that the site of the body is not the scene of the murder yet?”

 

“That’s classified-” the sergeant started. “How did you put that together?”

 

“Not enough blood,” John replied, the words bubbling up without his authorization for them. Sherlock looked down at him with a winning expression.

 

“Not enough blood?”

 

“The skip was clean, the brick couldn’t have had five litres of blood on them, even with the rain,” Sherlock said, eyes rolling over to look at the sergeant. “Coupled with the blood not being the victim’s in the first place, and you’re missing an actual crime scene to ascribe to the murder. You won’t have that crime scene until you have more evidence, more scenes where these criminals left corpses out. So find the other blood samples that match the ones from this scene,” Sherlock said, as though it were just that simple. “And then we’ll have something to go on.”

 

The sergeant stared at the pair of them. John steadied the teacup on his knee as his hand started to tremble. Sherlock’s thumb brushed against the back of John’s injured shoulder, brushing bruising and scarring alike, and John felt the tension in him relax just a shade.

 

“You’re actually serious,” the sergeant concluded.

 

“Oh. And you may want to pick up the two assailants again. Charge them with attempted assault, if you need to. I’ve the rips in my clothes to prove it.”

 

“Sherlock,” John said, looking up at his mate.

 

Sherlock soothed him by shifting the hand on the back of the couch to his shoulder and giving it a gentle rub. He still wasn’t broadcasting his feelings, but that touch felt just as reassuring. John’s eyes drifted shut.

 

The sergeant frowned. “I can’t do that without a formal statement of complaint.”

 

“Considering you’d be collecting two mafia cleaners from the streets, I think you can make an exception this once.”

 

“You’re not serious.”

 

There was silence for a moment.

 

“Are you serious?” the sergeant asked, voice a pitch higher than before.

 

“Follow the evidence, sergeant, and you’ll come to the same conclusion.”

 

“I’m not a part of violent crimes, Sherlock,” the sergeant said.

 

“Then find someone who is, and we’ll explain it to them.”

 

“You’ll still have to come down to the station, Sherlock,” the sergeant said.

 

“Once this family business is taken care of, I’ll consider it,” Sherlock replied.

 

John’s eyes popped open at that, and he looked up at Sherlock again. The stroking fingers continued, and though Sherlock’s expression was fixed on the sergeant, John knew the words had been for him.

 

That was a bit of a shock.

 

Not that Sherlock considered _him_ family, they were mates and neither of them questioned it or wished for that to change, but John was coming to understand that being mated didn’t mean quite the same as being married and with all the trouble that came along with the Watson clan, he hadn’t expected there to be much-

 

He didn’t exactly have tender feelings towards most of his family on his own. Sherlock didn’t have to-

 

The gentle touch to his shoulder turned into a gentle squeeze, and Sherlock shifted so that the warmth of his thigh was against John’s back. John didn’t bother resisting the urge to lean back against his mate, and let his eyes drift closed. He kept a careful, if trembling, grip on his tea mug.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your lovely comments. I've had to keep quiet on them because I don't want to spoil the ending with my glee at discussing what Sherlock's actually up to, etc. Also, my apologies for the delay in posting. I've been working on author-things outside of fandom, and they've eaten up more of my time than I'd like. (Creating a mailing list is hard, folks. I keep toying with the idea of having one for my fanfiction writing, but that will have to wait until after I understand how they work int he first place!)
> 
> ONE MORE TO GO IN THIS STORY!!! WHOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!


	29. Chapter 29

Sherlock could, absently, feel Lestrade’s gaze on him.

He didn’t care. Neither about the look _nor_ the tea growing cold in his hand. To illustrate this to anyone observing, he ignored the look and set his tea aside.

John had been broadcasting for hours, _loudly,_ since before they collected Harriet from the park, but none of it had made any sense. There were brief moments in which what came from his mate was comprehensible emotion, but any clarity was quickly consumed back into a swirl of feelings that was rapid-fire and dizzying.

Sherlock had been, for hours, for the last day, slowly picking his way through the flurry of John’s turmoil. It was a painstaking, distracting process that tried, repeatedly, to turn Sherlock’s stomach in all the knots that John was in. Sherlock was very sedulous, and no trivial concerns of the flesh would derail him. He had a very strong stomach, anyway. He thought that was fortunate in this situation, but he also suspected that his strength was more to do with John than any arbitrary expression of genetics. His mate required his strength, and so it was there.

Sherlock was… _Happy_ was not the correct word, exactly. Satisfied? That was closer, certainly, and while it was imprecise, it would do for now, as the true importance lay in John. Sherlock was _satisfied_ to be so deeply in touch with his mate. His conclusion, as time drew on and he found his way through the depths of John's tumult, was that John seemed to be _overwhelmed._ That conclusion was in line with Sherlock’s rudimentary understanding of his mate’s situation, but the deduction was hard to verify. How, Sherlock struggled to reason, did something so small - that cut from the mug, _really?_ Sherlock ranted to himself in the confines of his mind - cause so much chaos? Everything he had known of John prior to this was stable, steady, and caring.

The wolf in Sherlock wanted to bodily remove Lestrade. The wolf wanted to slam the door with the world forced outside and make a nest with John tucked into it, to carve out a space for John to calm down. It was a strangely _rational_ urge, not the sort that Sherlock was used to feeling from his wilder side, but, once that solution was presented, it was not hard to conclude that some things with John would only happen in time, and the only cure to _this_ mood would be _that._

Time.

Sherlock hated time.

He hated the length of it that stretched into infinity when boredom struck, he hated the endless years of loneliness as one after another of his siblings found a mate and left the shared space of their existence.

Worse, still, he hated the time _before_ John.

The empty hours with no response, the stretches of days that went along endlessly. Worse still, Sherlock had not even known he had needed a John. That as a concept seemed entirely alien to him, but now that John _was,_ it felt as though there had been nothing before him.

And then John stopped time entirely. All the nauseating swirling of emotion from John came to an abrupt halt when Sherlock explained to Lestrade why he would not be leaving the house, and the unending sensation of time passing evaporated.

John’s blue eyes found him, and Sherlock found no desire to look at or even acknowledge the other man in the room.

“You said-” John started, only to cut himself off with a breathless gesture.

The empty space left in Sherlock by the whirling feeling morphed into relief, strong enough that it tasted of sunshine.

John turned in his seat and bent closer, pressing his cheek into Sherlock’s stomach.

Sherlock wished - a thing he had not done in ever so long - that time really could stop and this moment could continue forever. He stared down at John, taking in every detail of his mate that he could.

The morning sun shone on John’s blond hair. The light made the gray sprinkled in it blend in with the soft yellow. There was a softening affect to the lines of his face and the lines _on_ his face. John was a little warm, he thought, through his sleep shirt, but Sherlock couldn’t be certain without touching him. From the weight on him, John was as fully leaned into him as he could be without dumping out the mug of tea he was holding. John's turn, his _lean_ put him off balance, propped up only by Sherlock. Trustingly so. John’s hand was shaking, and that was troubling, but there was nothing to be done about it at the moment.

Sherlock plucked the mug from his mate's fingers and set it away with his own, freeing up John’s other arm. It wrapped around Sherlock’s waist as soon as it could. That was an improvement, to say the least.

Sherlock was smoothing John’s hair from his temple when Lestrade made a little noise.

“Don’t you have some phone calls to be making, Lestrade?” Sherlock asked.

Lestrade narrowed his eyes at Sherlock, an expression telegraphed by the guttural noise he made more than by sight as Sherlock was still looking at John. Sherlock ignored him for the moment, preferring to concentrate on the sensation of John melted into him. John was warmer, he found as his fingers brushed the man’s temple. Not warm enough to be an infection setting in, but still something to take note of.

“Bloody hell, Sherlock,” Lestrade griped from beyond him. “You’d better be telling the truth about this, or I swear I will put you in traction myself.”

The truth that Lestrade demanded was an interesting concept. Of course Sherlock’s conclusions had been true. It was his explanations of how he had reached them that were blurred. When he’d investigated the scene he had noticed the blood was the wrong type at once, thanks to that unfortunate incident his first changing moon and Temperance’s now well-hidden thrill at being almost caught whenever possible. He could tell the blood of anything from a woodhen to a stag if pressed, and that wasn’t even counting vacations. He had, at some point in the last handful of hours, come up with a perfectly logical, perfectly _human_ reason he knew it was aminophthaloyl hydrazide contaminating the samples without having done a lab test of his own. He had also come up with a way to explain how he was certain that the blood at the scene had been augmented with pig’s blood in the first place.

In the end he hadn’t even had to explain that it was pig’s blood, which was good because as soon as John’s distress had evaporated so had Sherlock’s well thought out explanations.

It didn’t matter.

None of that mattered, just then. Sherlock couldn’t find it in him to care about it, even as a puzzle he had successfully solved. Where he had recorded those answers in his mind palace was empty, a blank room that was like a note written on white paper that was washed out in too much sunlight.

What mattered was the compact man pressed into Sherlock. Trusting, needing.

Everything else could sort itself out for a while.

All that mattered was right here in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we say our farewells to _Tolerance_. It's been a very interesting ride for me as an author, because I've used it to help myself work on some process things. I wrote a draft of the whole story, the bones, and then fleshed it out as I edited it. (I believe it might have taken me twice as long otherwise, and it already took quite some time!) This has saved it from the problem that happened with _Handling_ which was that a troll spat on it when I was still posting it, and my entire path forward evaporated. (Thanks to all of you lovely reviewers who ask questions and have intelligent comments instead of throwing matches at things.)
> 
> I took the process for this and applied it to a book I'm working on. I think the book's slated for ~150,000 words, and I've gotten to 126,000, so I must be doing something right. (Write? I almost typed that one, and it would have been cute but the wrong word.) Wish me luck on it. 
> 
> For my Sherlock-type personalities, of which I am coming to understand that I am one, it may be interesting to note that _Tolerance_ gained ~30% of its word count during editing pre-posting. We began around 28,000 words, and we’re ending at over 40,000. I know it takes me a while, dear readers, but I hope it’s been worth the wait.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading. It was a pleasure to have you come along with me and the boys.
> 
> I'm already poking at the next installment of this, but I am quite curious as to what you readers think may be coming in the next bit. Leave me a comment with your theories. ^__^

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, lovelies. I told you I didn't want to post this until it was "finished", and while I can promise that chapter 28 isn't done-done, IT'S STILL CHAPTER 28 AND THE THING IS 30K ALREADY. 
> 
> This is, as usual, not Brit-picked, and I still live in the Colonies, so you'll have to forgive me if there's glaring errors and offenses against British-isms. Particularly, as you can probably tell, as we are about to meet and deal with some of London's finest. 
> 
> I apologize if the summary is a bit vague, but it's always hard for me to summarize longer work like this. I mean things happen, but I always hate giving it away. I'd prefer you were able to experience it the way that I do, which is with amusement and mild surprise.
> 
> I will go ahead and warn folks that there are some Not Good moments in this, but nothing any harsher than Mycroft's abysmal attempt at "sobering up" Sherlock from previous stories. It will skirt into some things for John, and John will skirt back into some things he'd rather not talk about - which is probably why this took so long, I fully blame Chapter 25.
> 
> Lastly, as I ought to really toddle off to bed so I can get some sleep before work tomorrow, if you've been reading along with this series, I can warn you that it has not been nearly as long as you think it has since the series of stories started. I counted, and this is _officially_ only 6 days after "Privation", which was the longest stretch of time in the entire series. (I broke out timeline software to check all of this, and I was surprised, honestly. 1.5 days in "Requisite Pitstop"; 3 days in "Exogamy"; 21 days in "Privation"; and 3 days in "Affective Transference".) "Tolerance" is, for all it's 30K, barely a week.
> 
> I guess maybe I just put John and Sherlock through a lot. ^_^
> 
> As usual, I hope you enjoy!


End file.
